Pause; Ask: Listen (Week 5: A Covenant of the Heart)

 

 

Introduction

This Lent, we are joining forces with our friends at First United Methodist Church, Wadesboro, Calvary Episcopal Church, and First Baptist Church, Wadesboro to offer each congregation's unique perspective on the same overarching theme.  That theme is: Pause; Ask; Listen.  As part of this theme, we here at First Presbyterian are offering up a weekly opportunity to pause what we are doing to read a piece of scripture, ask a questions or two relating to our daily lives, and listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit as a piece of music plays.

This week's reading comes from Jeremiah 31.  Here, Jeremiah declares that God has chosen to renew our covenant with the Almighty by writing it on our hearts so that we can never escape the inner knowledge that he is our God and we are God's people.

Scriptures

Jeremiah 31:31-34
³¹The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Option 1

What is the current state of the heart I've been tending?

Option 2

What message of love or purpose is Jesus writing upon my heart?