Back to the Secret Place

“Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number” (Jeremiah 2:32, NKJV).

I quote this Bible passage whenever I miss my daily prayer time because of my busyness. It always drives me back to the secret place, where I cry, “Oh, Lord, I don’t want to forget you!”

This verse is frightening when we consider the context of the passage. God is reminding his people that he planted them as a noble vine of sound and reliable stock. They started out on the correct path with his blessing, but now they have forsaken him. 

“Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backslidings will rebuke you…it is an evil and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and the fear of me is not in you… How can you say, ‘I am not polluted, I have not gone after the Baals’?...For they have turned their back to me… In vain I have chastened your children; they received no correction… My people have forgotten me days without number” (Jeremiah 2:19-32).

God’s people were no longer going to his house to worship him. They had become lazy and had forgotten all his blessings and judgments. They neglected him for days on end, pursuing their own pleasures; and worst of all, they said, “I am innocent…I have not sinned” (Jeremiah 2:35).

If you do not worship God with all your mind and heart, little by little, neglect will creep in, and you will begin to worship merely out of habit. 

You say you love Jesus, so I must ask you: Do you worship him daily, with all your heart, without distractions? Do you dig into the word of God, or do you go for days without opening your Bible or praying to him in your secret closet? 

God will not allow you to sit in your seat anymore and let your mind wander. He loves you and knows the power that pure worship releases in your spirit. It makes you stronger than any lion and bigger than any giant. It pulls down every stronghold because it makes you a pure-hearted, single-minded worshiper of him.