Build and Plant | Pleasing God When All the World’s A Stage

In Jeremiah 14, we read a prayer offered to God to deliver the people of Judah from a drought, and boy, is it a good prayer. But God tells Jeremiah he won’t listen to it. 

Why would God not listen to their prayer? Because he knows that the people don’t mean it, and he isn’t interested in them presenting themselves to be righteous, signaling to him that they were the right kind of people he should save. He knew that wasn’t true of them. 

Pastor Joel talks says when we meditate on this passage, we see what God truly desires: not for us to project ourselves to be the "right kind of people" by letting them know we have the right opinions or complain about the people it’s popular to complain about, nor to try to trick him with it either. All we do is condemn ourselves by failing to live up to our own standard. Instead, he wants us to come to him as we are—in vulnerability and humility and repentance. That is where God meets us and dwells with us. Why would we not have that posture?