Daily Manna · Day 193 · July 12
Law Written on Hearts
“I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Most of us keep at least one rule only when somebody is watching.
So here is an honest question: what would actually close the gap between who we are in public and who we are in private? More willpower has been tried, and so have stricter rules. That is the very situation Jeremiah is speaking into. Israel had the clearest law ever given to any nation, and still God says of that covenant, "which my covenant they brake."
God's answer is the same law at a new address: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Notice that He does not cancel the commands. Anyone who uses this verse to say the law is finished has read only half a sentence. God moves His law off the tablets of stone and into the place where you make your choices when nobody is looking. Then He adds right away, "and will be their God, and they shall be my people." The next verse says, "they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them." So the point of a law written inside you is more than better rule-keeping. It means knowing God for yourself, without needing other people to tell you what He said.
That still leaves a question, because a promise about the heart cannot be checked from the outside, by you or by anybody else.
So test it where the test is real. Name the one thing you do that you would not repeat in front of the people who know you best. Ask God today to write that particular command on your heart, more than just helping you grip harder. Then, once today, in that one place, act in private exactly as you would in public. It may feel as though nothing happened, and that is how God's work inside you often feels while it is happening. He is the One who promised to write it there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 193 is Seek His Face (Psalm 105:4).