Jeremiah 29:11 (AMP) For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

Most of us take comfort from this scripture after we have come to Christ. Those words were penned to a people who were still in captivity, carried off to Babylon.

Jeremiah 29:10 (AMP) “For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years [of exile] have been completed for Babylon, I will visit (inspect) you and keep My good promise to you, to bring you back to this place.

Why did God inspect those in captivity if the promise was to all Israel?

Ezra 1:3-4 (KJV) Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Not everyone had a heart to be set free. They enjoyed the riches of their captivity and stayed.

They traded the promise of a future with hope and peace for a future that could only end in disaster. The sad part about trading futures is that they had seventy years to ponder the proposal, to change their hearts, and they did not.

How much time has the Lord given you to change your heart and make it a place of worship?

James 4:14 (KJV) Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.