A Heart to Know You —7-Day Devotional & Group Study

Seven Days

One short reading and one prayer a day. Ten minutes, no rush.

1. Day 1God Don’t Follow a Man This Far

   "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast."

   The song opens in a rented room where nobody knows the man’s name, and he does his grief math out loud: everything I built got carried off, so God must be back there with it. “I figured You stayed behind with it all. God don’t follow a man this far.” It sounds like despair, but listen closer — it is actually a doctrine. He has quietly decided that God is local. God lives where the good years lived: in the old house, the old church, the old job, the town where people knew him. Cross enough county lines away from all that, and you have crossed out of God’s territory.

   Maybe you have done the same math. The unwanted season has its own geography — the apartment after the divorce, the city you moved to for the job you lost, the hospital corridor, the spare bedroom at your daughter’s house, the pew of a church where nobody turns around when you walk in. And the lie arrives with the boxes: God was in my old life. He did not make this trip.

   Psalm 139 dismantles the lie by asking it the only question it cannot survive: where, exactly, is this place God cannot reach? “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” David runs the map to its edges — the heavens, the depths, the wings of the dawn, the far side of the sea — and finds the same Person at every border crossing. “Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” Even there. That is the psalm’s quiet thunder. There is no “this far” with God, because there is no far. The man in the rented room believes he has traveled beyond God’s presence, when in fact he has only traveled beyond his old evidence of it — and those are not the same thing at all.

   Notice, too, what the psalm says God’s hand is doing out at the map’s edge. Not merely watching. Guiding. Holding fast. The hand the exile assumes he left behind is the very hand that has been steering the truck. He will not learn that until the stop-time moment of Day 3 — but Scripture lets us say it now: the road that feels like it led you away from God is a road He is present on every mile of.

   So start this week by naming your geography honestly. Where is your “this far” — the place, the season, the address where you quietly believe God is not? Say it out loud. Then read Psalm 139:8 over it, slowly. If you make your bed in the depths — even there.

   Journal Questions

   • Where is my “this far” — the place or season where I quietly assume God is not?
   • What “old evidence” of God’s presence did I leave behind, and have I confused losing the evidence with losing Him?
   • If Psalm 139 is true, whose hand has been guiding me down the road I thought I was traveling alone?

   Prayer

   Lord, I confess the map I drew — the one where You stayed behind with everything I lost. Your Word says there is no far side of the sea where Your hand is not already holding fast. Open my eyes in this unfamiliar place, and teach me that I have never once traveled alone. Amen.

2. Day 2The Road Where Prayer Went Quiet

   "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?"

   “I quit prayin’ somewhere on the road out here.” Not in a storm of rebellion — somewhere on the road. Prayer did not die in this man; it starved. There was no dramatic renunciation, just a night he did not bother, and then a week, and then a settled quiet with its own sad logic: “Hope don’t grow in borrowed ground.” Why plant prayers in a life that is not yours — a rented room, a temporary town, a season you never chose?

   Before anyone rushes to correct him, notice something startling: Scripture makes room for this silence. Psalm 137 is in the Bible — God’s own songbook — and it is the song of people who stopped singing. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept... we hung our harps.” The exiles did not smash their harps; they hung them up, within reach, unable to play. And when the demand came for a performance — “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” — they answered with the most honest question in the Psalter: “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” God did not edit that question out of His Book. He preserved it, which means He is not scandalized by yours.

   So if your prayers have gone quiet in your own foreign land — the widowed bed, the empty nest, the diagnosis, the town where nobody knows your name — hear this first: the silence of grief is not the same as the absence of faith. The sons of Korah wept their way through the same country: “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (Psalm 42:3). These are believers. Their harps are hung, not sold.

   But Psalm 42 also shows the way the silence begins to break — not with forced cheerfulness, but with a man talking to his own soul: “Why, my soul, are you downcast?... Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him” (Psalm 42:5). Yet. That small word is a seed that grows even in borrowed ground. He cannot sing today. He refuses to say never.

   And quietly correct the song’s botany while you are here: hope does not require owned ground, because hope was never planted in your circumstances. It is planted in your God — and Day 3 will reveal that the “borrowed ground” has a Landlord who sent you to it on purpose. For today, do just this: take the harp off the poplar. Not to perform — just to hold. Tell God the truth Psalm 137 tells Him: I am here, I am weeping, and I do not know how to sing in this place. That is a prayer. The silence is already breaking.

   Journal Questions

   • Has my prayer life gone quiet in this season — not from rebellion, but “somewhere on the road”? Can I name where?
   • What does it change to know God kept Psalm 137 — the song of people who could not sing — in His own Book?
   • What would it look like this week to take the harp down and simply hold it — to tell God the honest truth of Psalm 137 instead of a performance?

   Prayer

   Father, You kept the song of the people who could not sing. So hear the truth: my harp has been hanging on the tree, and I quit praying somewhere on this road. I will not pretend to sing tonight — but I will not say never. I am here. You are here. Start there, Lord. Amen.

3. Day 3I See You, Son — I Sent You Here

   "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”"

   The song stops. The instruments cut out, and into the dark of the rented room comes one bare voice: “I see you, son — I sent you here.” Six words that break both of the exile’s doctrines at once. I see you — so God did follow a man this far. I sent you here — so this road was not a falling off the map. It was an assignment.

   That is exactly the shock of Jeremiah 29. The exiles in Babylon assumed the same: Nebuchadnezzar took us; God stayed in Jerusalem. Then a letter arrives from the Lord Himself, and listen to His pronouns: “all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon... the city to which I have carried you into exile.” Not the city Babylon dragged you to — the city I carried you to. Behind the army, behind the catastrophe, God calmly claims the sending.

   Keep the tension honest here. This is not God authoring evil — Babylon’s cruelty was Babylon’s sin, and Scripture never excuses it. But it does mean no exile is outside His sending: the same sovereignty that permitted the loss has purposes for the place. And the letter proves the purposes are good, because of what God tells them to do there: build houses, plant gardens, marry, raise children, seek the peace of that city and pray for it. Every one of those commands assumes a future — in Babylon. This is the soil where His famous promise grows — “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11) — written not to graduates on a sunny day, but to exiles in a city they never chose.

   “I sent you here” changes everything about your unwanted address. The layoff did not un-employ God. The divorce, the transfer, the diagnosis, the move you made in tears — none of it happened while He was looking elsewhere. You were seen the whole way, and you were sent. The question of this season is no longer “how do I get back?” but “what has He sent me here to build?”

   So today, do one Jeremiah 29 thing. Unpack a box — literal or otherwise. Learn a neighbor’s name. Pray for the peace of the very town, workplace, or season you have been refusing to accept. Sent people settle in — not because the exile is forever, but because the God who sees you is already here.

   Journal Questions

   • What difference does it make to hear God say “I sent you here” over the season I have been calling a wrong turn?
   • How do I hold the tension honestly — God not authoring the evil that hurt me, yet claiming the sending and the purposes of this place?
   • What is one “build houses, plant gardens” act of settling in — one investment in this unwanted place — I could make this week?

   Prayer

   Lord Almighty, You see me — and You sent me here. Forgive me for treating this address as proof of Your absence. Give me the courage of the exiles: to build, to plant, to pray for the peace of the very place I did not choose. And let me trust Your plans in it — for good, not for harm. Amen.

4. Day 4A Heart to Know Me

   "My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart."

   Now we reach the song’s engine room. The chorus is not inspired by Scripture; it nearly is Scripture. Set the two side by side. “I’ll give you a heart to know Me, to know that I am the Lord” — “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord.” “I’ll plant you — I won’t pull you up” — “I will plant them and not uproot them.” “You will be Mine, I will be your God” — “They will be my people, and I will be their God.” “And you’ll come back with your whole heart” — “for they will return to me with all their heart.” The songwriter has simply let Jeremiah 24:6–7 sing. Whatever this chorus does to you, the Lord said it first — and He said it to exiles.

   Now count the “I will”s. My eyes will watch over them. I will bring them back. I will build them up. I will plant them. I will give them a heart. Five promises, one Promiser, and the exiles contribute nothing to the list but their need. Even the one clause that sounds like their part — “they will return to me with all their heart” — is the fruit of His gift, not the price of it. Read the order carefully: He gives the heart to know Him first; the whole-hearted return follows. God does not wait for you to produce a devoted heart and then reward it. He gives the heart He requires.

   That is the gospel hiding in a minor prophet, and it is the difference between religion and grace. Religion says: mend your heart and come back, and God will receive you. Jeremiah 24 says: God will give you a new heart, and that heart will come back — the promise Ezekiel echoes as a heart of flesh for a heart of stone, and the new covenant Jesus sealed in His own blood. Your desire for God, weak as it may feel tonight in the rented room, is not your gift to Him. It is His gift to you, and He finishes what He plants.

   And do not miss where this promise lands: on the people whose lives were in ruins. Not “I will give them back their houses” — history did that only partially. The first and central promise to the people who lost everything is a Person: a heart to know Me. As the song’s third verse discovers, “It took losin’ home to find You.” Exile is where acquaintance becomes knowledge — where God stops being the furniture of your old blessed life and becomes the one thing you cannot lose.

   So pray the chorus back to its Author today, in its original words. Lord, give me the heart. Not first the restored career, the mended family, the old address — the heart to know You. It is the one prayer in this song God has already promised, in writing, to answer.

   Journal Questions

   • Five “I will”s in two verses: have I been treating my return to God as my project, or as His promise?
   • What is the difference between knowing about God from my old, blessed life and the “heart to know Me” He gives in exile?
   • If God gives the heart He requires, what does that mean for the person — maybe me — whose desire for Him feels almost dead right now?

   Prayer

   Lord, You wrote this chorus long before anyone sang it: a heart to know You, planted and not uprooted, Your people and their God. I cannot manufacture that heart — so I hold You to Your own “I will.” Give me a heart to know You, and it will come back to You whole. Amen.

5. Day 5Nowhere Town, Holy Ground

   "When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”"

   In the third verse, the man’s eyes have adjusted to the dark, and the room has not changed — he has. “This nowhere town turned holy ground. You didn’t leave me — You led me here.” Same town, same rented ceiling, and suddenly he is standing on holy ground. What changed was not the geography. It was the discovery of who had been in the geography all along.

   Jacob made the same discovery on his own exile road. He was running from a wrecked family — a con gone wrong, a brother who wanted him dead — and night caught him in a nowhere place with a stone for a pillow. And there, of all places, heaven opened: a stairway, angels, the voice of the Lord promising presence and homecoming. Jacob woke and said the words every exile eventually says: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” Then he named the nowhere spot Bethel — house of God — the gate of heaven. The place did not turn holy that night. It was holy the whole time; Jacob’s awareness was the only latecomer.

   “I was not aware of it” may be the most hopeful sentence in Genesis for anyone in an unwanted season, because it means the presence of God does not wait for your awareness to arrive. He was in the hospital room before the diagnosis was read. He was in the new city before the moving truck. He was in the rented room every silent night the man was not praying. Your numbness never evicted Him.

   And look backward, as Moses taught Israel to: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2). Led you — all the way — in the wilderness. The wilderness route itself was His leading. That is the song’s testimony in Torah form: You didn’t leave me — You led me here.

   So today, rename your address — not with real-estate optimism, but with Jacob’s realism. Walk through the season you have been calling nowhere and say over it: Surely the Lord is in this place. Then set up a marker as Jacob did — a journal entry, a stone on the windowsill, a prayer said out loud at the kitchen sink — so that from now on, this spot has a name. Bethel. The house of God, at your address.

   Journal Questions

   • “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” — where might that sentence be true of my life right now?
   • What is the difference between saying “God left me here” and “God led me here” — and which have I been saying?
   • What marker could I set up this week — my own Bethel stone — to remember that this unwanted place is holy ground?

   Prayer

   Lord, You were in this place, and I was not aware of it. You did not leave me — You led me, all the way, every mile I thought I walked alone. Open my eyes where I stand tonight, until this nowhere town has a new name: the house of God, the gate of heaven. Amen.

6. Day 6The First Ripe Figs

   "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians.”"

   The bridge names the scandal the whole song has been building toward: “They said the lucky ones never left — but You called the carried-away Your own. The first ripe figs — the good ones — were the ones who lost it all.” That is not poetic license. It is Jeremiah 24, almost verse for verse.

   Here is the vision. After the first deportation, God showed Jeremiah two baskets of figs in front of the temple: one of very good figs, like those that ripen first — the early summer figs prized above all others — and one of figs so rotten they could not be eaten. Any observer in Jerusalem would have labeled the baskets instantly. The good figs? Obviously us — the ones still here, still near the temple, still holding our lives together. The bad figs? The deportees, the losers, the ones God clearly judged. Then God flips the baskets. The good figs, He says, are “the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away.” The rotten figs are the comfortable ones who stayed. The people everyone pitied were the people God prized; the “lucky ones” were the basket headed for ruin.

   Read that vision into your own comparisons, because we all keep two baskets. Scroll any feed and the sorting looks obvious: the intact families, the funded retirements, the answered prayers — good figs. The laid-off, the left, the relocated, the grieving — surely something went wrong there. The song’s bridge and Jeremiah’s baskets say the sorting is exactly backwards. “I regard as good the exiles.” Loss had put them where comfort could never put the others: in the place where God gives new hearts (as Day 4 promised — the very next verses). The ones who lost it all ripened first.

   Jesus climbed the mountainside and said the same shocking thing in eight lines: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:3–4). Blessed — not eventually, after the mourning stops, but in it. The emptied hands are the ones He fills; the mourners are the ones He comforts; the carried-away are the ones He calls His own and sets His eyes on for good.

   Be careful with the comfort here — it is not that suffering earns God’s favor, as if grief were currency. The exiles were not better people; some of the “good figs” had sinned as badly as anyone left behind. The difference is what God sovereignly intended to do in them. Loss is not proof of His rejection; it is often the field of His deepest work.

   So retire the phrase “the lucky ones.” If this season has emptied your hands, you are not in the discard basket. You may be in the first-fruits basket — eyes of God upon you, for good.

   Journal Questions

   • Which “basket” have I assumed I am in — and whose life have I been calling lucky while quietly calling mine judged?
   • How does “I regard as good the exiles” challenge the way I read other people’s losses — and my own?
   • “Blessed are those who mourn”: where have I treated mourning as evidence of God’s absence rather than the place of His blessing?

   Prayer

   God of the two baskets, forgive me for sorting the world by its winnings — and for reading my losses as Your rejection. You called the carried-away Your own and set Your eyes on them for good. If loss is where You ripen Your first fruits, then have Your way in my emptied hands. Amen.

7. Day 7Back with My Whole Heart

   "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."

   Listen to what has happened to the chorus by the end of the song. Every pronoun has flipped. “I’ll give you a heart to know Me” has become “You gave me a heart to know You.” “You’ll come back with your whole heart” has become “I’ve come back with my whole heart.” Nothing in the promise changed; the promise simply came true, and the man now sings it back as testimony. That flip — from promise to testimony — is the whole journey of faith in miniature.

   Jeremiah 29 ends the same way, with God narrating the homecoming in advance: “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.” Notice the first word — then. After the sending, after the building and planting in Babylon, then you will call: the man who “quit prayin’ somewhere on the road” will pray again. And notice who does the heavy lifting in the reunion: I will listen. I will be found. I will gather. I will bring you back. Even the seeking “with all your heart” is not a hurdle God sets but a gift He has already promised — remember Day 4: “I will give them a heart to know me... for they will return to me with all their heart” (Jeremiah 24:7). The whole heart that comes back is the heart He gave. The return is not your willpower kicking in; it is His promise ripening — the last “I will” coming true in your voice.

   And the circle runs deeper still: God did not manage our exile from a distance. He entered it. Christ Jesus, “being in very nature God... made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–8) — the Son leaving home so that runaways could come home. That is why the Father in Jesus’ parable does not wait on the porch: “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). Still a long way off — and seen. The exile has heard that before: I see you, son.

   So end where the song ends: pray the final chorus as your own. Thank Him for every mile — even the ones that broke you — because it took losing home to find Him. And if you are still mid-road, take heart: you will call. He will listen. He will be found. And you will come back — with your whole heart, because He gave it to you.

   Journal Questions

   • Which promises in this song are still “future tense” for me — and which can I already sing in past tense, as testimony?
   • If the whole heart that returns is God’s gift and not my willpower, how does that change the way I pray for my own homecoming — or someone else’s?
   • Christ entered exile to bring me home (Philippians 2:6–8; Luke 15:20). What would it mean this week to trust the Father who runs — and to start walking?

   Prayer

   Father, You said I would call on You again — and here I am. You gave the heart, You kept it through the far country, and You ran to meet it on the road. Thank You for Jesus, who left home to bring me home. I have come back with my whole heart — because You gave me one. Amen.