Daily Devotional
Jeremiah 44:16-17 As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.
What are the mistakes that you keep making? The people of Israel and Judah kept making the same mistakes and it resulted in great distress. The remnants who were left in the land of Judah came to Jeremiah and asked him to seek God on their behalf so that they would know what their next step should be. They were considering going down to Egypt for protection because they did not think that they were safe in Judah given the threat of the Babylonians and the recent killing of the governor of Judah by rebels. Ten (10) days after Jeremiah sought God, he got an answer, the word of the Lord to them was that they should stay in the land of Judah, and He would “build them up and not pull them down”.
However, if they followed through with their plan to go down to Egypt, then they would “die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. The people rejected the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah and instead gathered all the people, including Jeremiah and took them down to Egypt. Once again, the people of Judah acted in total defiance to the word of God, repeating the same mistakes they had made in the past.
The reason the people of Judah and Israel kept making the same mistakes is because they had not learnt from their mistakes. In Jeremiah 44, God reminded them of all that had happened to them recently and in the past because they had refused to obey his words. They dismissed those assertions and instead attributed their plight to their failure to burn incense and pour out drink offerings to the queen of heaven. They did not have the wisdom to identify the real reason for their current and past troubles and so they prescribed the wrong solutions. Unless we learn from our past mistakes, we are bound to repeat them over and over again and that was what happened to the people of Judah.
Life Application: Learn from your past mistakes by first identifying where you have gone wrong and then adopt the Biblical solution to the problem.
Prayer: Lord, give me the wisdom to first identify what my past mistakes are in order to avoid them in the future. Thank you for your guidance. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Daily Devotional 
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