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.”
We all keep a rule we only keep when somebody is watching.
So here is a real question: what would actually close that gap? More willpower has been tried. A stricter rule has been tried, and that is precisely the situation Jeremiah is writing into; a nation had the clearest law ever given to anybody, and of that covenant God says here, which my covenant they brake.
His answer is not a stricter rule. It is the same law at a different address. I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. Notice what he does not do. He does not cancel the commands, and anyone using this verse to announce that the law is finished has read half a sentence. He moves it off stone and into the place where you decide things when nobody is looking. Then read what he attaches immediately: and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the next verse: they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest. The point of an interior law is not better compliance. It is that the relationship stops being conducted through people telling you what God said.
Which leaves the question standing, because a promise about hearts cannot be verified from outside, by you or by anybody else.
So test it where the test is real. Name the one behaviour you would not repeat in front of the people who know you best. Ask God today to write that particular command inside you rather than help you grip harder. Then, once today, in that one place, act in private exactly as you would in public. It will feel as though nothing happened. That is what an interior thing feels like from inside.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 193 is Seek His Face (Psalm 105:4).