HOW FAR WILL YOU GO TO OBEY?

Jeremiah was not an eloquent speaker nor was he a great preacher when God first chose him. God did not choose him because he was intelligent or mighty in any way. But Jeremiah was a man that trusted God in all matters, Jer. 10:23. He would not have been the man for the job, had God been seeking a superstar. For God wanted someone who was teachable, who was moldable to His will and was willing to be devoted to the task that God would require of him. That was the man Jeremiah and because of that trust, he took an unwanted message to a people that was rebellious and backslidden from the God they claimed to know. Because of that message, Jeremiah faced peril upon peril as he was mocked by his own people, Jer. 20:7, he faced death in verse 26, he was beaten and put in jail in 20:2 and again in 37:15, and was accused of derision in 38:4 and wanted him put to death because of it, those are only to name a few. The people of Jeremiah's time believed that they were invincible and somehow, had a free ticket with God because they were Jews. Most had no moral sense of faith, they thought that it was enough to only perform strict ceremonial acts as part of God's Law and attend temple. Their religion was external, material, and ceremonial. While Israel's spiritual status was bathed in a false security, Jeremiah knew the truth. To Jeremiah, righteousness started internally, it was spiritual, and based upon a personal relationship with God. Israel had become spiritually rotten to the core and God assigned Jeremiah the task of telling them so. Jeremiah's prayer life was the source of his strength that enabled him to keep preaching the truth in the face of fierce opposition from the very ones that he was trying to reach with the message God had given him to share. To face the fire of people's anger and the icy cold shoulders of their rejection. Clinging to the Lord, even the hardest of times, allowed God to create perseverance in Jeremiah. Jeremiah's prayers and perseverance indicate an undying love for his fellow brothers, of which was never understood by his contemporaries. What made Jeremiah a great preacher was his prayer life, his tenacity and perseverance, and his burden for those whom he was called to go to. Although Jeremiah was often treated unjustly by those about him, the consequence of sin on his fellow countrymen led him to pray fervently many times on their behalf. Chapter fourteen is devoted totally to his intercession on their behalf as he confessed sins and begged God for mercy on them.

Jeremiah developed a close personal relationship with God from the very beginning. He had such a dependency upon God that he never concealed any thought from Him. His first recorded words to God were, "I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth" 1:6. Jeremiah had thought he had limitations at first. But God proved to him that it was not his ability that God sought, but his obedience. While Jeremiah had praises for God, as found in 17:4 and other places throughout his writings, he was not always filled with praises. Oftentimes he complained. When a plot was revealed that some men planned to take his life, he went to God and asked, "Why does this happen? How can You let it happen?" in chapter 12. While Jeremiah was devoted to the welfare of his friends, family and countrymen, he had a burning desire according to chapter 20:8b-9  into telling them the painful truth about themselves, causing them to lash out at him. He complained, "I have not done anything to anyone, yet everyone curses me. Woe is me!" in chapter 15:10. The apparent frustrations over his fellow countrymen led Jeremiah to pray to God for justice in return for the injustice he had received. Some of his prayers contained hurls of imprecations concerning how he was treated, that give the readers a special insight into the extreme frustration and mental anguish he endured. From praises to curses, Jeremiah held nothing from the Lord, and the Lord sustained and strengthened him. When He felt God's awe and wonder, he praised Him. When he was persecuted and suffering, Jeremiah reminded God of his own faithfulness and asked for justice. Whether it was praise, complaint, or a call for judgment, Jeremiah's open and honest prayer life reveals the inward struggles that he endured with God’s help on a daily basis. Unless Jeremiah had worked to sustain his relationship with God through prayer, he would have never persevered. Like Jeremiah, may our hearts prayer be to have and contain the burden for others that God may be placing on our hearts or some other task and that we may be able to say, “So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jer. 20:8b-9

The book of Jeremiah was the final prophecies that God sent to His precious Judah, a wayward and rebellious children. He told the prophet Jeremiah to go and take warning of the oncoming destruction, if the nation did not turn and repent. Jeremiah called out for God’s people to turn back to Him, as he recognized the inevitability of Judah’s destruction, due to their unrepentant idolatry and immoral hearts. Their hearts had become so hard against the truth, that they refused to neither recognize, nor see the warnings as real and forthcoming. Instead, they lay blame on Jeremiah…it was just easier that way, for his message fell on deaf ears and it was unwanted. As Jeremiah sought to do the right thing, it seemed as though no one was happy with him. When he rebuked Judah, they thought of him as a trouble maker, one who provoked dispute and caused conflict within the land and the people. He felt condemned if he did tell the people the truth and he felt condemned if he didn’t. I have felt that way myself, many times and can assure you that as you walk with God, you too will find the same discouragement as did Jeremiah; as it often goes with the call of being used of God and can often times leave you feeling despondent and pitted against the very ones that you are trying to help. The Lord responded to Jeremiah’s discouragement assuring him that he would care for him in those times of loneliness, misunderstandings and isolation from those that were cursing him for what he was doing. God told Jeremiah that He would rescue and deliver His people from their sin, redeeming them and liberating them from their bondage if they would simply, turn back to Him. While like Jeremiah, you too may face those spiritual dry patches where no matter how much you serve, how much you give and how much you do, you sometimes will succumb to discouragement, and like Jeremiah felt, you too may wonder why it is, that the very ones that you are trying to reach with truth appear to be an enemy, having no problems with how they are living or what they are doing. You must remember one thing….your job is not to bring the change, but simply to bring the message, seasoned in love and humility. We are servants of the Most High, and it is our job to speak the truth in love, and moreover, not to grow weary in our doing so. There have been saints and scoundrels all through history. The saints have understood some important things about what God’s Word teaches us and how we are to live if we are children of God. Scoundrels never seem to grasp those truths and laugh and mock at them, as though they were silly fables. If we know what to do in certain situations; then those truths can motivate us to resist the temptations that threaten to lure us off the high road and succumb to the low one.

Hold Fast,

Bren

RUNNING ON EMPTY

There are times in my life when I feel the wear and tear of my body as it is being depleted of energy, when my emotional, spiritual and physical resources are drying up and I begin to run on empty. I think most people can relate to feeling that way as well, at times. All around us, people are living lives on empty. They have nothing to fill them; no purpose, no drive, they’re just running on fumes. Have you ever been in a car that’s running on empty and were totally unaware that it appeared to be running on the gas fumes because the gauge showed it as empty? Have you ever found yourself pushing it to the limit, to try and make it to the next exit, while saying to yourself the whole time, “why didn’t I stop and get gas when there was an opportunity to do so?”. How about running out of gas on a hill? When that happens you find yourself going backwards and there is nothing that you can do but apply the brakes and cost to safety on a prayer.

 

Lately the Lord has been reminding me to be, Mary, and I am not talking about the kind of merry that is attached to being happy. I mean, making a direct purpose to pause and sit at the feet of the Master as Mary did, allowing His word to wash over me, cleansing me from all the things that beset me and take over my attentions by distracting me away from my time with the Lord. No one is going to make me bath spiritually on a regular diet of His Word. I must do it for myself. I must set aside the time needed to seek truth for myself and bath in it, to refresh myself from the daily grind of life and you must do the same for yourself as well my friend. We all must choose for ourselves, to stop and fill up, when all the urgent things around us tell us we don't have time. For some of us, our gas needle reminds us of how often we approached life, our physical engines knocking, hands on the steering wheel of our lives sweating, blood pressure rising in our body’s radiator, only to succumb to a blow up or blow out, and in either case it’s not good.

 

Recently, I found myself in one of these situations. My emotional storehouse was depleted. My spiritual bank account was being drained, to which I could barely even feel a spiritual pulse. I had nothing to draw from and was just about to blow. Things were getting done but I was emotionally and spiritually, exhausted. Mentally, I was wanting to just shut down, when a ray of light shined through as I opened up God’s word only to be reminded, that which Jesus said to Peter, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean…” John 13:10.  You see while I may have been getting bites here and there in God’s Word with my devotions, I had not allowed the Word to wash over me. I know this because when a situation arose that flustered me, my attitude triggered by the condition of my heart revealed that while I may have been getting bites here and there from God’s Word, it was not soaking in, to the dry parts of my heart, or I would have responded in a different way to my frustrations.

 

 

Here I was trying to wash other’s feet and serve them and I needed it myself. In John 13, Jesus rose from the dinner table during the meal, girded himself with a towel in a manner similar to the way in which a servant would gird himself as he sought to do a menial task, walked over to Peter, bent down and started washing Peter’s dirty feet. It was common at that time for people to wash their feet before dinner, as feet in sandals would often get dusty on unpaved roads. While it was customary hospitality for hosts in Jesus’ day to make provision for guests to wash themselves or, as a sign of honor and respect, to even provide a servant to wash the guests’ feet, it was certainly outrageous for the host himself to engage in the washing of his guests. So in a cultural sense what Jesus was doing, was truly radical. At the time Peter did not understand the deep significance of what was happing at that moment, but as Jesus was explaining to him, it began to soak in and Peter thought that maybe he needed a good washing all over, which Jesus explained that he did not.

 

As a believer in the truest sense of the word, I am washed in the cleansing blood of the Lamb. I no longer need a spiritual bath. But, I do need to dust off the dirt that attaches itself to me as I live out my daily life on this earth where strife and sin still abound. It is because of this struggle with sin, that I must remember, that the burden falls on me alone, to take responsibility for investing in myself to keep my feet washed. I must do what is necessary for replenishing my energy, make rights wrong, tend to the upkeep of my soul according to Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." I must go myself, in order to re-direct my emotions and to achieve control over all these unwanted feelings that seemed to bubble up from time to time in those murky depths of my weary heart. Life is not an idealized parade of lovely attitudes and well-balanced ministry and family. With time and experience, we can learn to prioritize and master the art of keeping our feet washed by sitting at the master’s feet, so not to become completely depleted, overextend physically, emotionally and spiritually; during those times where we give, work and serve until we find that we are running on empty.

 

Hold Fast,

Bren