Today if you hear His voice do not harden your hearts

 This would take teaching or a blog post but I was reading this morning about all of the evil of King Manasseh and how King Josiah comes out of the evil dark tyranny that had reined and starts issuing reforms and ridding the nation of it's idolatry and how the book of the law is found and there is reform and some stability under the reign of Josiah. However, he dies and so the story goes. The people of God are taken captive and return to their evil idolatry. I'd like to suggest a few things: 1) a nation like America doesn't look to a president for moral stability. Don't expect change if you aren't going to change from within. We must seek His Face Only and as people decline morally so does that nation. 2) If you have long standing addictions or idols, removing them from your life outwardly still doesn't change the inside. We must have The Lord eradicate the yeast that leavens the whole batch of doe. To the porn addict, removing the tv and computer won't retrain your heart and mind, it won't solve your problem even though you've taken steps. You must replace the old with the new and with any sin or addiction ruling over you...if you stay running around a proverbial pit of I will not see, I will not taste, I will not touch, you will jump back in the pit of whatever or just find a new one. 3) change or transformation takes place over time and following after Christ. Not just focusing on what you aren't supposed to do. The law can't save only the blood of Christ and being washed by the water of His word. We are made clean positionally in Christ but I'd like to suggest that we have to continually be washed by the water of the word.  Not unto salvation but for purity. Until we taste and see that He is good we won't know what we are missing and will be more and more conformed to this world and may have gained some temporary victory but nothing lasting. None of us come to Christ and get it together. We assume we are supposed to and it's to our own detriment. The Lord doesn't need us to play fake it til we make it. We aren't fooling Him. We can only pose so long and be good at it before we are the dog returning to his vomit. Jeremiah had desires for love and a mate and those were never met this side of eternity but the desires didn't go away either. He had to make choices and trust the One who is able to keep us from falling and present us without spot or blemish. I have my own struggles and temptations and carnal desires and even today I have to make a choice to say no to the flesh and yes to obedience. Satan will lie like a dog to you and me and make us doubt Gods goodness and we too will question at times if He is just holding out on us or justify our own sin. That's why we must be hearers and doers because that lie will be whispered and sometimes shouted at us but departing from Gods path has always meant suffering harm. If we suffer it's not to be for doing evil. We are to be good soldiers and not get entangled in civilian affairs. I have been the biggest fool ever to my shame and yet God calls and woos us to come to Him. To bring the heavy weight of sin and to return. Change has to come from the inside out. Not just outward manifestations that produce nothing. We must bring words with our repentance and have faith with deeds. His word is the only thing that's ever held my attention or freed me from myself. There are none like Him, I know not one.