"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD" (Lamentations 3:40).

Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet, was contemplating his present distress and that of God's beloved people, Israel.  Instead of enjoying God's obvious and evident benevolence in their lives, they were under the disciplinary hand of the Almighty.  All the distress and affliction had come by way of King Nebuchadnezzar, the earthly potentate of Babylon, who conquered, captured, and virtually annihilated the Jewish people and their beloved, precious city of Jerusalem in the year 586 B.C.

The profound sadness of the displaced Jewish people is expressed by the revealing and agonizing words of Jeremiah:

• "I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath" (Lamentations 3:1).
• "He hath brought me into darkness" (Lamentations 3:2).
• "He turned His hand against me all the day" (Lamentations 3:3).
• "He hath compassed me with gall and travail" (Lamentations 3:5).
• "He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out" (Lamentations 3:7).
• "He shutteth out my prayer" (Lamentations 3:8).
• "He hath made me desolate" (Lamentations 3:11).
• "He hath filled me with bitterness, He hath made me drunken with wormwood" (Lamentations 3:15).
• "He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones" (Lamentations 3:16).

All of life was seemingly against God's people.  Doom and gloom was their present and actual experience.   They were sad...afflicted...distraught...distressed...melancholy...confused....confounded...and embittered.  Why had their eternal and faithful covenant God allowed them to be conquered and  humiliated by a heathen, foreign king?  The hardness of their hearts before God, their refusal to hear His voice by way of the prophets, and their indifference to their urgent need to repent and follow the Lord, brought about their humilliation and great distress.  However, in their utter despair, their temptation was to blame and accuse God.  O, how we are so prone today to take up arms with them to disparage God in our times of loss, grief, and pain.  When difficulties come to our personal, marital, family and business lives, we begin to lay the blame on God rather than search our ways to see if we could be the responsible ones.  When there are difficult times that bring great distress and anguish, the natural man accuses God.  He rails on Him as unjust, unfair, unloving, and unfaithful.  He declares, along with Job's wife:  "Curse God, and die" (Job 2:9).  God is blamed as if He was the one responsible for evil happenings in the lives of sinful men.  However, the day of adversity and affliction has been divinely designed that man will stop and consider (Ecclesiastes 7:14).

In the day of anguish, pain, and desolation, we must search and try OUR ways.  We must examine ourselves!  We must judge ourselves!  We must lay the measuring rod of God's Word next to our lives to see if we have fallen short!  We must take spiritual inventory!  The great need of searching and trying our ways is important for two reasons:  to humble and accuse ourselves accurately of the crimes that we have committed before God, and, secondly, to exalt and justify God in justly allowing His rod of displeasure to come into our lives.

As we search and try our ways with the standard of the pure Word of God, we should examine ourselves for such things as:

• besetting weights and sins (Hebrews 12:1)
• unconfessed sins (1John 1:9)
• sins of hypocrisy and self-righteousness (Matthew 23:25-26)
• secret sins (Psalm 19:12, 90:8)
• sins of the spirit (Psalm 51:10; 2Corinthians 7:1)
• sins of ungodliness and worldly lusts (Titus 2:11-12)
• sins of unbelief (James 4:8, 1:6-8)
• fleshly lusts that war against the soul (1Peter 2:11)
• sins of evil thoughts against God and His revealed will (2Corinthians 10:5; Isaiah 55:7)
• generational sins (Nehemiah 1:6, 9:2)
• presumptuous sins (Psalm 19:13)
• youthful sins (Psalm 25:7; Job 20:11, 2Timothy 2:22)
• improper motives (Psalm 139:23)

Having searched and tried our hearts, thoughts, and ways, we must TURN to the Lord.  We must turn to Him in contrition and true repentance for our sins (2Corinthians 7:10).  We must turn to Him confessing our sins (1John 1:9).  We must turn to Him forsaking our sins (Proverbs 28:13).  We must turn to Him receiving the pardon of our sins through His cleansing blood (1John 1:7).  We must turn to Him divinely enabled and personally determined to sin no more (John 8:11).  We must turn to Him confiding that He is able to keep us from falling (Jude 1:24; 2Peter 2:9).  We must turn to Him gratefully acknowledging that even our repentance and faith, yea our ability to turn from sin to God, is because of His divine power, mercy, and infinite grace (Acts 11:18, 18:27, John 15:5; James 1:16-17).

Therefore, I urge as the weeping and warning prophet of old:  "Let US...............search and try our hearts and ways, and turn to the Lord!"  The purpose of this blog is to search the Scriptures, and try our ways against the Word of God, with the hope that where there is incongruity, we will turn to the Lord and His wonderful ways.  As David said, "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies" (Psalm 119:59).

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May all the praise, honor, and glory be for Christ alone!