Jeremiah 16, 17
In the midst of all the disaster which God is proclaiming through Jeremiah on all who forsook Him and did not obey or trust in Him is this little oasis of promise to those who did.
‘Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of draught and never fails to bear fruit.’
‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’
‘But if you are careful to obey Me, declares the Lord, and bring no load through the gates of the city on the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath day holy, by not doing any work on it, then kings who sit on David’s throne will come through the gates of this city.’ ‘If you do not obey me to keep the Sabbath day holy, I will send an unquenchable fire that will consume all your fortresses.’
Where is our trust? Do we really trust in God or do we trust in ourselves? Is He our confidence or are we and our efforts? If He is, we will not worry in hard times. We will send out our roots, deeper, until we find the ever flowing stream that is Him.
The heart is deceitful to convince us that we must take things into our own hands. We do not trust that if we honor Him on the Sabbath that He will bless the remaining six days. So we add a seventh and trust our own thinking.
If we would trust Him, life would flow in and out of our gates. If not, though all may appear to be okay for a while, He will eventually consume our fortresses – the false things in which we trust.
I don’t know if there is anything that God longs for more that to have a people who will trust Him. His ways are different. Before we can live we must die. Before we can have we must give up. Our trust is tested when He tells us to do something that seems contrary to our forward progress. Do we really trust?
Hunger and Thirst 
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