Faithful in OUR Exile

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes and plans to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and Have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare determines your welfare.
Jeremiah 29:4-7

This Place Is Not Our Home.
Babylon, under the direction of King Nebuchadnezzar, took control of lands and peoples different from themselves. What people and cultures he did not annihilate they worked to suppress in all ways to create ‘little Babylonians’. They took captive the Hebrews, God’s people – leaders, craftsmen, artisans, soldiers, prominent citizens, removed them from their homeland, and carting them off to the cosmopolitan capital of Babylon. The goal was to seduce the Hebrews into the Babylonian world view. Nebuchadnezzar took away the Hebrew’s land, religious practices, customs, rituals, places of worship, changed their diet, and more. Nebuchadnezzar worked to have his godless ideology take root in the hearts and minds of the Hebrews so that they would serve the interests of his empire. Talk about human trafficking! The Hebrews were outnumbered, dislocated, in cultural shock, and stripped from everything familiar and sacred to them.

Many Hebrews were seduced and or oppressed to the point of giving in to the Babylonian culture around them. But, there was Daniel and others who held fast to the person of God and His ways.

Faithful in Exile
Daniel, a Hebrew, and his Hebrew peers were captives in Babylon. They were among the oppressed living in an oppressive cosmopolitan and godless society. These young Hebrews had to make sense of and live faithfully in a culture that was working through every means to brainwash the surviving Hebrews, the Children of God, to abandon the ways of the Living God. (Sound familiar to us today?!) But, they remained faithful and steadfast to their Lord!

The Lord goes as far as to instruct those in a foreign land to, “…build homes, plant gardens, marry, have children…” In other words: thrive where you reside!

The men and women coming to Design and Intent Ministries seeking sexual purity and relational wholeness are faithfully working to walk out God’s design and intent for human sexuality and relationships in a culture that is working to brainwash them to the contrary. They are in a land that oppresses them with every social pressure to leave the ways of Jesus and deny the Creator’s design and intent.

God is with us and within us! All our hope is in Him. He is sovereign and has the big picture in mind for His created one, us!

God is using the experience of being exiled to purify and refocus within us His plans and purposes. Men and women remain steadfast. God knows where we are and where we are headed. We do not have to worry about the direction of the culture or those falling from the faith. Commit to being faithful to God and his ways. Trust His character and nature.

The men and women of Design and Intent Ministries and ministries across the nation are COURAGEOUS in exile!

Please prayerfully and financially support the COURAGEOUS women and men of Design and Intent Ministries.