We are coming to the last few weeks of our series in Life’s Healing Choices. As a part of this series we have been looking at areas in our life that we need to conform to the image of Christ. I think that all of us recognize that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Rom. 3:23. But there are, in many people’s lives, entrenched areas of sin that are called “strongholds”. Strongholds are entrenched behaviors/attitudes, such things as hostility, inferiority or manipulation, used as we live our lives in relationship with other people.

Recently I have been hearing and reading about one of my favorite memory verses: Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” But sometimes we take this verse out of context. Jeremiah was talking to the Israelites who were going into Babylonian captivity. They had falsely realigned their belief system, by seeking other gods, in the pursuit of prosperity and were suffering the consequences of their actions. The verse just before this one says that they will be in captivity for seventy years, for most of them, a lifetime.

In my morning devotionals, I have been looking at some readings from Charles Spurgeon. Recently his devotional was from Jeremiah 31:3 “with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” In the devotional he writes: “The thunders of the law and the terrors of judgment are all used to bring us to Christ; but the final victory is effected by loving-kindness. The prodigal set out to his father’s house from a sense of need; but his father saw him a great way off, and ran to meet him; so that the last steps he took towards his father’s house were with the kiss still warm upon his cheek, and the welcome still musical in his ears.”