If I Told You Once

If I told you once...

I heard those words on more that one occasion growing up. As a mom, I said them more than once. "If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times" are often the words of an exasperated parent. It communicates to the child: you should have this by now.

As I have been working my way through two of the major prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, I can't help but notice that it seems as if God is repeating Himself over and over warning Judah to return to Him. I asked myself why God committed 118 chapters of Scripture to say basically the same thing. Could the message not have been given in 10 or 20? Then it dawned on me, what I am reading in weeks, was written over a span of 107 years! It is believed that Isaiah was written around 740-680 B.C. and Jeremiah to have been written around 627-580 B.C. What evidence of God's patience and longsuffering. As I read what is recorded by the pen of these men of God, I can hear the passion of God calling His children to return to Him. He pursues them with great purpose and intent. He repeatedly warns them of the coming destruction if they refuse Him. If Anyone could say, "If I told you once, I told you a thousand times," it is God. And it would be literally true.

Lest we think the people of Judah were thick-headed and slow to listen, I believe the very same could be said of us. I know in my life, if it were not for the longsuffering of God, I would already have been consumed. For without a doubt He has told me things, the same things, more times than I care to count, yet I still refuse to listen.
Thank you, Lord, that you plead with your people over hundreds of years to repent and return, and forgive me for my own stubborn heart.

Diane Hunt is the Director of Addiction Recovery Ministries at America's KESWICK.