WEEK SIX - DAY TWO - GOOD PLANS AHEAD!

Could this be the hope we’ve been waiting for?!  It seems Jeremiah has been a long, dry road. It has been full of admonitions and warnings of upcoming discipline and destruction.  But here we have a day of God's good, good plans. We can say with joy in our voice the memory verse of this week, Jeremiah 10:11, “'For I know the plans I have for you', says the Lord, 'they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope'”

Now that is reassuring, isn’t it? To know that our God is planning good things for us, mapping out lives full of hope! If we just didn’t have to look back to verse 10, we could rest in the joy!  But when we do back up, we see that God certainly does have good plans for Judah’s future, but that good future comes 70 years down the longer, drier road of captivity.  Does that caveat erase the fact that God is still planning good for them? Or does it mean that God is abandoning them for these coming 70 years? Does it mean that no good can come out of these 70 years? When God‘s good "big" plans for us are delayed, do we grow discouraged and weary and doubtful that He ever had good plans for us in the first place? Do we feel like all good things have been put on hold? 

The good plans that God has envisioned for his people, His very good plans, will certainly come about. They will need to be patient and they will need to be confident of his faithfulness to His promise.  As do we. We have a God who is working for us, all the time.   In John 5:17 Jesus tells us, "My Father is always at work..."  Even when we are in the period of waiting for His ultimate good plan, He continues to have good plans for each segment of our lives.  In fact, Paul writes in Romans 8:28, "And we know [with great confidence] that God [who is deeply concerned about us] causes all things to work together [as a plan] for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose." Amplified Bible.  While the people of Judah lived in captivity in Babylon, God did not leave them and His plans were still ongoing.  His plans included a Jewish boy taken captive named Daniel, a servant to the King of Persia named Nehemiah, and an exiled priest named Ezekiel. In the time of waiting, His plans highlighted a heroic Queen named Esther, and a Jewish King named Zerubbabel. Was God far away, had he quit making plans for his people?  The stories of these Old Testament lives show how untrue that assumption is.   For all the other unnamed people of Judah living in exile, God had given them instructions of how to live in the time of waiting, Jeremiah 29:5 says, "This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper.”  While we wait for God's promise, He continues His plans for good.  We don't wait in misery, we wait knowing we have a good, good Father who is always at work on our behalf. 

Just as in Judah’s time of waiting, as we wait we, too, need to be reminded that God has never left us and that He is always at work.  Just as we now can see all the other things going on in those 70 long years of captivity, we can be assured that God is working out what we often think are the subplots of our bigger story; and then sometimes those seemingly lesser storylines, surprisingly (only to us, never to God) become our life’s big story. The one that we thought would never happen!  All of a sudden we say, "Wow, God did that in a way I never saw coming!"

Sadly, for many of us as we grow older, it seems that life no longer holds a great future or the light of hope.  We’ve passed the ages of setting goals, starting families, and nothing seems to get us as thrilled with life as we once were. I’m sure for the older Jews who were in exile and knew they probably would never see their home country again, they, too, had their hope diminished.  

I have come to think that God purposefully uses our diminished excitement with earthly plans to further ignite in us a greater anticipation about His heavenly plan…after all, it is His big, forever plan of good for us!  It is the plan that God had from the beginning of time, His plan of salvation for us, to reconcile us unto Himself and to live with Him for eternity.  

So, YES, this is a message of good, good plans ahead...plans for a forever future and a glorious hope!  

Revelation 21:1-7 - "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” 

And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.” And He told me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life. The one who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son."

WEEK SIX - DAY ONE - AN AUDIENCE OF ONE

The title of this lesson begs the question...who are we playing to?  Who are we looking to as we play on the stage of life to give us that longed for 👍?  What are the words we are longing to hear as we go through our day-to-day lives?  

"Great job with that presentation, today!"

"You really have such a great eye for decorating - your home is just so lovely!"

"Your family is just about picture-perfect!  You've been great parents!"

"You are one of the smartest people I know - you are just so knowledgeable about so many things!"

Those are great compliments - and none of the praised qualities are to be looked down upon in any way.  But if we're playing to the audience of our peers, our families, our friends, then we're always going to be seeking the next words of acknowledgement of our most recent and, hopefully, best performance.  Talk about stress!  Yet that's just what so many of us do - put ourselves in situations of performance for other people to give us their 👍 and bracing ourselves against the possibility of the dreaded 👎.  

Jeremiah was getting a lot of 👎, to the point of being threatened with execution!  Jeremiah was given specific words by God to proclaim to the King of Judah...not easy words, words of impending destruction and captivity.  King Jehoiakim wasn't too keen on hearing that he would be deposed and his kingdom taken from him, he didn't like the words Jeremiah proclaimed, and the Judean priests and prophets were right there with him.  "You must die!" ...they cried out...does it make you think of a similar scene approximately 600 years later?  The words then were "Crucify Him!" as our Savior spoke words from His Father that the priests and rulers did not want to hear.  Words of another King, another Kingdom, greater than they could imagine. When power and position are threatened, people tend to get very antagonistic! 

Jeremiah paralleled Jesus in another very striking way as he was interrogated...where Jesus said in John 10:18, "No one takes it from me [life], but I lay it down of my own accord", Jeremiah says, "I am in your hands; do with me as is good and right in your sight.  Only know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves, and on this city and on its inhabitants; for truly the Lord has sent me to you to speak all these words in your hearing."  Jeremiah never backed off of the words that God was giving him, even in the face of death.  Jeremiah knew whose hands his life was truly in, and God would stay by his side no matter what the people decided to do with him.  Just as David had written in Psalm 118:6, Jeremiah understood, "The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid, what can man do to me?"

Jeremiah's fate seemed sealed until "some of the elders" spoke up.  They remembered Micah, another true prophet of God, who had prophesied during the days of King Hezekiah.  He had also preached a message of impending destruction and of needed repentance. Hezekiah had heeded Micah's message and Judah had been saved from God's hand of judgment at that time.  The elders, those who could remember a time of obedience, turned the opinion around and Jeremiah's life was saved.  An interesting note that Scripture includes is that "the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, so that he was not given into the hands of the people to put him to death."  I am not familiar with this character, are you?  Looking back in 2 Kings 22, we find that Ahikam was indeed the son of Shaphan, and Shaphan was the scribe who had been given the Book of the Law that had been found in the temple.  Shaphan had brought the Book to King Josiah and when Josiah had heard the words of the Book, he tore his clothes and sent a group, including Shaphan and his son, Ahikam, to inquire of the Lord concerning the words of the Book.  Shaphan, Ahikam and the others in the group had to go back to the King with hard words, words of God's wrath against Judah due to their disobedience, and they had fearlessly delivered the words as they had been given.  So, dear Ahikam, had been in the place where Jeremiah found himself now, delivering hard words and standing true to God.  Ahikam was likely one of the "elders" that recounted obedience and adherence to God's prophets had been to Judah's favor in the past, and they needed to consider the "old, godly way" as they were at this critical crossroads!

The thing is...Ahikam, Jeremiah...all the other Old Testament prophets, didn't back down.  They didn't opt for the popular or preaching the message that would draw a crowd.  All they did was say, "This is what the Lord says...." and they didn't add to or take away from the words they had been given.  And then our ultimate example, Jesus!  He certainly didn't back down, He stayed true to His mission and obeyed His heavenly Father's voice, always and completely.  John 12:50 "I know that His commandment is eternal life. So the things I speak, I speak [in accordance with His exact instruction,] just as the Father has told Me.”  Amplified  Bible.  

If you, like most of us, fight the addiction of the approval of others, pray for a release from that painful and destructive compulsion.  It adds stress and confusion to our lives.  We must decide now who our audience is and then give it everything we've got...so that when the last curtain falls, we hear our One saying,  "Well done!"

WEEK FIVE - DAY FIVE AND WEEK RECAP

How very fast these weeks have gone!  Five weeks behind us and here we are heading into the last week of our study of Jeremiah.  I hope you have gotten as much out of it as I have.  Looking forward to one last week of diving into what this prophet of long ago has to share with us.

The last day of week five was titled, "Rescue with Repentance" - the only way to true spiritual rescue is through our true and broken-hearted repentance.  Key word in that sentence is "true"...we won't truly be rescued unless we are truly repentant.  The people of Judah voiced their repentance, but their lives didn't reflect the words that were coming out of their mouths.  Our text tells us, "The people were crying out for rescue, but God knew their hearts.  Their motives weren't right.  They wanted God's hand of help without any relationship or repentance...Like a good parent, God chose to allow Judah to experience the difficulty brought upon them by their bad decisions."  Until our hearts cry out for rescue, with pure motives and ready for restoration upon our repentance, God won't reach down to rescue us, just as He did not respond to Judah.  True repentance isn't just admitting our sinfulness and saying we're sorry, it is turning away from our sinfulness and asking God to give us the strength to remain turned away, to desire to distance ourself from what we know is opposed to God's will for our lives and to turn to God and the lives of holiness that He calls us to.

When we stand in opposition to God and refuse to turn, we find ourselves lying about God and about ourselves.  If we find ourselves thinking that God is less than who He really is or if we find ourselves thinking that we have as much authority over our lives as God does, we need to stop and review our lives and see where we might have gotten off track, where there is a need for repentance and a u-turn to get turned back around.  That's why Psalm 139:23-24 is such a good prayer to routinely voice to God, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."  

From our text, "God is always faithful to redirect us, rescuing us from a road of dangerous pitfalls."  It's so much better to call out for rescue when we realize we're on the wrong road, but we haven't yet fallen into a pit.  The sooner we heed God's redirection, the better.  And the sooner we learn that God is for us, never against us, oh, so much the better....then we are not nearly so prone to get on that rocky road in the first place!  Lord, help us trust You....that's what you keep asking of us, isn't it?

Our fifth week was focused on Quitting the Blame Game, Personal Responsibility.  In our session on Friday, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the Scripture of  Jeremiah 6:16,  "This is what the Lord says, 'Stop at the crossroads and look around.  Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it.  Travel its path and you will find rest for your souls.  But you reply, 'No, that's not the road we want.'"

Isn't that just a treasure of a Bible verse?  So, so much good advice packed in this verse.  And yet, the closing sentence shows the people of Judah, and the people of today, responding with the same stubborn comeback, "Nope - that's not the way we want to go."  There has just been an offer made of rest for our souls, and yet we reject that offer and think we have a better way.  And then we wonder why we have lives full of anxiety, stress and malcontent!  Again, God is asking us, "Trust Me!" and we say, "No, we really think we can find a better way to get to where we're going."  God has a better way for our earthly lives than we can devise on our own, and He has a much better way for our eternal lives.  He has THE WAY...the only way.   If we try to get there on our own, we're going to be sorely disappointed - we can't.  There's a chasm that is unmanageable for us to traverse, we won't make it.  

What is that old, godly way that we are to ask for?  Jeremiah knew the Torah, and he very likely was thinking of Deuteronomy 30:11-20, "Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.  See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.  But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 1 declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.  This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God gives us a clear message, He shows the way for us, we are the ones who have the choice to make as to how we will live.  Then  He made it even clearer for us when He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to tell us that He had come to let us know He was preparing an eternal home for us, and that if He was preparing that home for us, He would surely come again and claim us as His own and take us to that glorious new home.  

Stop, look, ask, walk, and find...

• Stop what we're doing now and see if we need an adjustment
• Look around us and see who we need to be helping along the way,
• Ask, continually ask, for God's direction, look to that old, godly way
• Walk in that way - travel that path
• Find rest!  The rest that only comes through the One who can provide...Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest."

It's a great offer!  Don't turn it down!

WEEK FIVE - DAY FOUR - GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS

There's been many stages in my life when I've felt like I'm just going through the motions with God.  Just checking off the "to do" list of church attendance, Bible study, prayer time...everything by rote, without much emotion or interaction of my heart.  I don't ever want to be there on any kind of long-term basis again, and yet there are still days that feel forced, when I wonder if God is listening, or if I am, or if either of us is connecting with the other.  While I think it's normal to experience some "dry" days occasionally, if these days come too often, or too close together, it's time for some examination of our lives, our hearts and what it is that is drawing us away from the heart of God.  Because God IS listening, God is ready to connect and, as the old saying goes, "Feel far from God?  Guess who moved?"  It's never our Heavenly Father who has drawn back...we can always trace the lost connection right back to our wayward heart.

Matthew West released the song "The Motions" in 2009 and the lyrics really speak to what we're talking about today:

"I don't wanna go through the motions, I don't wanna go one more day
Without Your all consuming passion inside of me.
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking, what if I had given everything instead of going through the motions?
No regrets, not this time, I'm gonna let my heart defeat my mind.
Let Your love make me whole. I think I'm finally feeling something."

God wants us to have His passion, His all consuming passion, inside of us.  He asks us to give Him our whole hearts, and abandon the emptiness of going through the motions.

The people of Judah had been in a very long dry spell.  Oh they were still offering the sacrifices, false prophets were still delivering soothing messages from the temples, but their hearts were far away, turned away from God, and turned toward their neighbors' pagan influences. In Jeremiah 7:9-10 God makes it clear that they are not fooling Him, "Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, 'We are delivered!' ---that you may do all these abominations?" and in Jeremiah 23:10b-11 we read, "...'the pastures of the wilderness have dried up.  Their course also is evil and their might is not right. For both prophet and priest are polluted; Even in My house I have found their wickedness,' declares the Lord."  They were both physically and spiritually dry and yet they had deceived themselves into thinking that God would be pleased with their superficial worship...He never is.  

When we are coming to God with hearts that are in every practical aspect turned away from Him, and yet stand in worship with hands held high and sing words of praises, He is no more pleased with us than He was with the people of Judah.  He wants our hearts...He wants our lives.  We read in Romans 2:29, "And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by God's Spirit.  And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people."  Here's your sign - who are you seeking praise from?  When our hearts have been changed by the Spirit of God, we seek the praise of God alone.  And what does it look like to worship God in a manner that pleases Him?  

In Psalm 51:17 we are told that "The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart."  We cannot worship God in a pleasing manner if we come to Him with a haughty spirit, without a desperation for His healing of our brokenness, without acknowledging Him as our only source of cleansing and restoration.  

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, that we must worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).  In Matthew Henry's commentary on this verse, he states, "The spirit or the soul of man, as influenced by the Holy Spirit, must worship God, and have communion with him. Spiritual affections, as shown in fervent prayers, supplications, and thanksgivings, form the worship of an upright heart, in which God delights and is glorified."  My emphasis added to fervent prayers, supplications and thanksgiving because we can fall into rote patterns of prayer that are far from fervent.  We must continually ask for hearts that are soft and ready to pour out our every emotion in our conversations with God.  

This brings to mind how the people of Judah were viewing God's provision for them...they had this idea that their continued "worship" of Him, in whatever manner they were willing to bring it, ensured that God would continue to protect them, bless them and keep their cushy lives, well, cushy!  In Jeremiah 5:12-13 they say, "He won't bother us!  No disasters will come upon us.  There will be no war or famine."  We have to be very careful that our worship of God isn't reduced to worshipping Him for making our lives good and comfortable.  Our proclamation that "God is good" needs to be said when we've experienced wonderful times and equally proclaimed when we've gone through the valley.  Worship of God is due Him because He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, Creator of the universes and, yet, being all that, He knows us and loves us...individually, personally.  We worship Him for no other reason.  We praise Him for all that He has done for us through the sacrifice of Jesus and the forgiveness that His blood brings over our lives.

We thank Him for earthly blessings that He has brought to us, but we don't worship Him for that.  We worship Him for who He is and praise Him for what He has done for us.  If all our earthly blessings go away, we still will have hearts of worship.  For He will still be God.  Worthy of all honor, praise and glory!  

WEEK FIVE - DAY THREE - PERILOUS PRIDE

PRIDE - imho the root cause of all sin - our complete obsession with self.  Satan knows us so well; as he whispers in our ears, he prefaces almost every temptation with "You"..."You deserve it", "You need it", "You are more important", "You are smarter."  And our itchy ears say, "Yes, yes, yes, I do and yes, I am!"  And down the rabbit hole we go!  Chasing the elusive "something" that will feed our pride and make us feel complete.  While all the time God is calling to us to lay down our pride and allow Him to be our completion...but that takes admitting that we need Him and that we cannot find completion within ourselves.  Pride is the barrier to the relationship with God that He is calling us to.  We must recognize it within ourselves and then ask Him to rid ourselves of it, asap!  The sooner we humble ourselves, the sooner He will be able to have true Lordship of our lives.  There's only room for one on the throne of our hearts!

The nations that surrounded Israel were full of earthly pride.  They prided themselves on their accumulation of wealth and treasure, on their powerful horses and military might, and on their trade skills.  They were arrogant in their feelings of independence and self accomplishment.  And Judah, God's special people, had allowed their neighbors' attitudes to infiltrate into their own...they too were arrogant, and sometimes in the fact that they felt God had elevated them to a place of no reproach.  God would never turn on them, no matter how far they wandered away from His commands...or so they thought! Jeremiah 5:12-13 "They have lied about the Lord and said, 'He won't bother us!  No disasters will come upon us.'"  

Back to our memory verse of this week, Jeremiah 9:23-24, "This is what the Lord says, 'Don't let the wise boast in their wisdom; or the powerful in their power; or the rich in their riches.  But those who wish to boast, should boast in this alone:  That they  truly know me and understand that I am the Lord.'"  God is telling us that we have no reason to be prideful...all of our wisdom, power and riches are of no value to Him.  He has no need of them.  And the only thing that we can offer to others that is of any eternal value is our true  knowledge of God and the acknowledgement of Him as Lord over all.  Brag about that if you're going to brag about anything!

When Jeremiah's assistant, Baruch, grows weary of his assignments and complains of fatigue and being overwhelmed, Jeremiah admonishes him and asks him, "Are you seeking great things for yourself?  Don't do it!" Jeremiah 45:5a.  The same warning comes to us...are we seeking great thing for ourselves over and above the assignments that God is tasking us with?  Is our view of our importance, our wisdom, our abilities causing us to question the "lesser" things that God may have laid out in our lives for us to accomplish for His purposes?  Don't do it!  Don't let pride cause you to miss something wonderful, a moment when you truly see God allowing you to participate in His plan in a way you would have never imagined!  Jeremiah tells Baruch that because of his obedience, God will spare him from coming disaster.  "Great things" that Baruch may have dreamed of doing may have led him right into situations he could have never gotten out of and completely out of God's will.  

Pray for the areas of your life where you tend to feel prideful and ask God to rid yourself of that sinful pride.  Then ask Him to remind you of all the things that you boast about in Him, all the ways that He has shown Himself in your life.  Pray for yourself, pray for our nation to be humbled and to turn back to our Creator God.  He IS everything...He IS life....He IS our God!

WEEK FIVE - DAY TWO - FINDING A TARGET

After living in a household with at least one other person ALL of my life up until 3.5 years ago, one of the things that I find most annoying about living alone is there is NO ONE to blame things on....other than me!  Whenever the remote isn't where I know I left it, or there are dishes left in the sink and not put in the dishwasher (WHO does that?), or when I find yard work not done that I needed done by this time of the year, I look to find who it is that I can blame?  And there's no one....only ME!  Now I wonder if I may have been the culprit all along...no, I don't think so.  Surely all of these bad habits have only recently developed.  (Really....?  I think I may owe my family members some apologies!)

Another method we use to avoid taking responsibility is the "you never told me" line.  That's the one that kids love to frequently use on parents.  "You never told me you wanted me to......." whatever the chore was that you gave them and are now reprimanding them for not doing.  "You never told me it was important to....." whatever the good habit was that you tried to get them to develop.   The problem is, they were told, they just weren't listening.

Judah fell into both categories of finding targets to shift their lack of responsibility onto.  They blamed their problems on Jeremiah, and they claimed that God had never made it clear to them what He wanted of them, and they pretty much denied they'd done anything wrong.  How can they ever feel the need for repentance if they never admit that they have failed?  How can we?  

If everything is always someone else's fault, then we won't come before God and bring our failures to Him.  It just doesn't work to say, "God, they made me do it and I didn't know it was wrong."  That doesn't qualify as repentance.  "God, it didn't seem wrong to me so as long as I'm true to myself, I really didn't do anything wrong."  That doesn't qualify as repentance.  "God, I am a complete and wretched sinner trapped in the pit of sinfulness and in desperate need of a Savior."  THAT qualifies as repentance.  

God had made it abundantly clear to Israel and Judah what He required of them.  They could not say they didn't have clear instructions and they could not say He hadn't made their transgressions apparent to them.  They could say that they had chosen to ignore Him and His directives to them, but shifting the blame to God wasn't going to work for them...and it doesn't work for us.  When God pronounces to His people through His prophet Jeremiah that they have forsaken Him while worshipping idols, that they have followed their own desires while ignoring His commandments, that they failed to teach their children of Him and of His wondrous deeds done on their behalf, do they listen and repent?  No, they admit no wrongdoing and condemn Jeremiah for his words of discipline.  God's earnest plea to them to recognize their sinfulness and turn back to Him falls on deaf ears and discipline follows.  

Should we expect anything different? The people of Judah had the Torah and the prophets to relay to them God's will.  We have the complete Scripture, an abundance of teaching and teaching modalities, AND we have the Holy Spirit living within us.  Can we deny that God has made His will readily available to us if we seek it?  But do we, like the Judeans, forsake Him in preference to worldly gain and do we pursue all of our selfish and sinful desires rather than His directives over our live?  Have we failed to pass on to our children and grandchildren our faith in our Father God and share with them what He has done for us in our lives?  If we have failed in these ways, then we should be hearing His call to us to repent, to accept our personal responsibility in failing to put God first in our hearts, with no other target to put the blame on other than ourselves.  

It is so easy to try to shift blame to someone, anyone, else so that we don't have to make changes or question our decisions.  We even try to blame God.  "Well He's the One that made me this way!" which we all say at one point or another!  "He made me and He knows me so how can He blame me?  It's on Him!"  That's the ultimate blame game, isn't it?  While the first two segments of that question are true (He made us, He knows us), the third is not...He has given us everything we need to become the people that He has designed us to be, and His design is good and perfect and reflected in His Word.  If we try to excuse any sinful human propensity in our lives (laziness, lying, gossiping, sexual immorality, hatred of others) by ascribing it to God's design for us, we're just wrong.  All of those things come to us through brokenness and by living in our flesh rather than by living in His Spirit.  Romans 8:5 "Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit." and Romans 12-13, "Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."

God made it clear to Judah, He makes it clear to us.  God gave them a choice, Jeremiah 21:8 "Tell all the people, 'This is what the Lord says: Take your choice of life or death!'"  God gives us a choice as we read in Romans - live according to the flesh, or according to the Spirit - one brings death, the other life.  

God wants us to live - and to live abundantly!  Choose life!

WEEK FIVE - DAY ONE - GOOD DISCIPLINE

Our overall theme of this week is Quitting the Blame Game - Personal Responsibility, and today's focus is on Good Discipline.  Does that seem like an oxymoron?  Doesn't discipline, in the context of correction, have a negative connotation?  Does anyone like to be disciplined?  

If you are a parent, you've undoubtedly had to discipline your children in the course of their raising.  And inevitably, when the pronouncement of the dreaded punishment came, whether grounding, taking away of a privilege, or when they were very young a swat to the fingers or their bottoms to let them know that they had just misbehaved, was met with the reaction, "That's not fair!  I didn't deserve that!"  And yet, we knew as their parents that we had to intervene at that very moment so they could be aware that whatever had invoked the discipline was something we didn't want to see continue in their behavior.  I remember hearing James Dobson say, and I'm paraphrasing, that whatever behavior you saw in your child that you didn't want to live with for the rest of their lives, and yours, you should address there and then and put a stop to it before it gets a foothold.  

As our good Father, I believe God does much the same for us.  When He sees us taking a path that He knows is not going to lead us to good places, or that will lead us away from Him, He corrects us as His children in whatever way He needs to to get our attention and reset us on His good path.  Sometimes this correction can be painful, and we can say, "That's not fair!  I didn't deserve that!"  But we are the child, and He is the Father.  He is the One who can see all the way down that road, all the way to the end of our path, and He is bringing us home.  I think of the verse in Philippians 1:6, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  That's exactly how I picture God's discipline in my life...He's carrying on with his good work in me.  And He will until He gets me home.  Thank You, Father!

Not all hardships that we go through are God's discipline.  Many of them are due to the fact that we live in a sinful, broken world where we still deal with sickness, death and sin.   Our bodies breakdown and we die, and those we dearly love die, and it's hard. Needless violence runs rampant because people are in rebellion to God, and it's hard.  And we trust God.  

Some hardships come because we make really poor choices - we don't take care of our bodies and we get sick; we don't focus on our families and relationships are broken and splintered; we feed our minds trash, and we wonder why we're depressed, we overspend and end up financially stressed or bankrupt.  (My husband had a saying on that one that he loved to share with children and grandchildren, "When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will become your downfall." That's about right!)  We can't blame God when we aren't following His guidelines for our lives.  He has given us His best advice on living this life here on earth through His Word.  He won't erase the circumstances of our bad choices, but when we repent and ask Him to walk with us to correct our missteps, He is faithful to do so.  And we learn again to trust God.

The troubles that are the hardest for us to understand, though, are those that come about due to our obedience to God.  That's where Jeremiah found himself - he had been obedient, he had done what God had asked and what had it gotten him...no family, no wife, no children, no friends, no respect.  But what had it gotten him...the knowledge of who God truly is and that He is Lord!  This brings us to our memory verse this week, Jeremiah 9:23-24, "This is what the Lord says, 'Don't let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful in their power, or the rich in their riches.  But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know Me and that I am the Lord.'"   That's what Jeremiah had gotten, bragging rights over the wise, the powerful and the rich...because he knew God and he knew Him as his Lord.  Can we cling to that when we see those who are not paying attention to God, gaining on us in worldly standards?  When we, as Christ-followers, may experience worldly ridicule?  When we hear of Christians around the world being truly persecuted, beaten, jailed or even killed for their faith?  Can we say, "But they knew God!  Nothing compares to that!"  Isn't that what Paul said in Philippians 3:8, "I count everything as loss compared to the priceless privilege and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord [and of growing more deeply and thoroughly acquainted with Him---a joy unequaled].  For His sake I have lost everything, and I consider it all garbage, so that I may gain Christ."  Amplified Bible.   WOW!  That's looking at life through reborn eyes!  Losing everything and considering it a joy unequaled to do so in order to gain the knowledge of Christ.  Do we value knowing God that greatly?   Do we trust God that much?

As God tells Jeremiah in Jeremiah 12:5, if you're having trouble running against men, don't even think about running against horses! If we fall down in peaceful living, how will we do when troubles really come upon us?  We have to change our perspective - we have to join Jeremiah and Paul in seeing that what God has in store for us is worth so much more than we can imagine based on the garbage of this world.  We learn to trust God - more and more and more.

So, if we are being disciplined, thank God that He cares for you so much that He treats you as His sweet child...needing a little nudging, sometimes a sterner reprimand, to bring you back to His good and perfect way for your life.  If we're going through hard times, whether of our doing or due to this crazy world we live in, we put our trust in God to walk us through.  And if we're being persecuted for His name's sake, for our obedience to His Word, for our faith in our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, then we look forward, with our reborn eyes, to the completion of the work that He has begun in us, the true and complete knowledge of Him that we will enjoy for eternity.  

Yes, there is good discipline when it comes from a good, good Father...and we have the best.