”The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”“
Jeremiah 17:9-10 NIV
Yesterday, during my #lunchtimedevotions, the Word above came to me as I opened my Bible randomly and read what was already highlighted in green – from many years ago. And so it’s all about whether or not our hearts are clean before a holy God. This as “ the heart is deceitful and beyond cure, and beyond all understanding”.
Later on I would read in the New York Times about this:
By J. David Goodman, David Montgomery, Jonathan Wolfe and Jenna Russell
This story was reported on the ground from campuses in Austin, Los Angeles, Boston, Rhode Island, San Antonio and New York.
Published April 24, 2024Updated April 25, 2024, 1:29 a.m. ET
A wave of pro-Palestinian protests spread and intensified on Wednesday as students gathered on campuses around the country, in some cases facing off with the police, in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza.
University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.
At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.
Protesters on several campuses said their demands included divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.
Comment: The challenge , the existential challenge that students, and at one time many of us were in that mode, protesters, and adult also, face is that what they wish to change, the heart, is beyond their cure. And beyond their understanding. For how can you fathom the mindset that would lead to #GenocideinGaza. And #GenocideinGermany during world war 11, when Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews. Or Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, or Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia when millions died. Or Biafra. Or South Africa. And over 1000 murdered every year in Jamaica for years.
No! The problem of changing the hearts of men and women, sinful humanity, is not the gift of protesters, nor “progressive rulers”, but in what the Benedictus announces:
“ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people:
And hath raised up a mighty salvation for us: in the house of his servant David. A promise made to the one who God described as “ one after his own heart”. The one who cried out, after #Bathsheba :
”Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.“
Psalms 51:10, 17 NIV
And the Living God, creator of Heaven and earth, Gaza, and Israel, Jamaica and Haiti, who saw the heart of David, forgave him of his terrible and egregious sin. But like all the other great men of God had to :
”These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.“
Hebrews 11:39-40 NIV.
Only together with us in Christ Jesus.
That’s the background for the Report of the Lord for today.
One that:
”For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”“
1 Corinthians 1:18-19 NIV
”For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.“
1 Corinthians 2:2-5 NIV
And the second report rests on this first one. That:
”He must become greater; I must become less.”“
John 3:30 NIV
This as those who err, those who are disobedient, those who are tempted to preach “ Jesus and the Cross, plus other things”, those who find meaning and power in anything beyond the cross of Christ, are those who have become in their minds, whether consciously or subconsciously, greater, and Christ has become, in their preaching and in their livity, less and less. Despite their claim to believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God.
And so that kind of Christianity has no power to fight against evil. And change the hearts of broken humanity. And so the land mourns as the children in Gaza, and all over the world suffer and die. Because of unchanged hearts. Thank God for Jesus, we have a remnant in the world, through whom God will effect his power to change the world. According to his purpose and timing ! And then one fine day, cometh The Judgement.
Until then those who preach and live Christ and Him Crucified, as first priority, and seek to become less , and allow the Christ in them to become greater, “ Christ in you the hope of glory”, and not seek glory for themselves , God will use those who repent of their sinful ways, whose hearts God alone sees, and “ change my heart O God, make it truly thine”. For his glory and honor. And use them to heal Gaza, and Israel, and Jamaica and Haiti.
Good and gracious God we beseech to renew thy church with those whose hearts have been washed and purified by the cleansing blood of the Lamb of God, even Jesus Christ and him crucified. Lord renew thy church that the church may renew the nation(s) where hearts which are evil cause pain and grief and no peace.
In obedience
Shalom
LWJ
danielgodsurelywilldeliver 
Thanks, Lucien