WEEK ONE - DAY THREE - CONFIRMATION

What does the word "confirmation" mean to you?  To me, as someone who started out their faith walk as a young girl in the Lutheran church, confirmation was a rite of passage, a marker of attainment of a certain age and a stage of your faith.  Confirmation, for Lutherans, is the opportunity for each individual to "confirm" their infant baptism, to publicly profess their affirmation of the faith that their parents committed them to as a baby brought to the Lord.  I went through Lutheran Confirmation when I was 12 and learned a lot of foundational Christian truth through the classes that I attended for the preceding year.  

But while this was a confirmation from me to the Lord and to my church, the confirmation we are talking about now is the reverse - it is confirmation from God to us.  And this is something that I've struggled with.  How do I know what God really wants me to do in any given situation?  How do I determine His voice from my own inner leanings.  How do I hear from Him as to whether to go the left or to the right?  "and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21  There have been very few times when I feel that I have heard God tell me which direction to go, or which choice to make, or which opportunity to pursue.  Maybe I haven't been listening.  Maybe I haven't been asking.  But Jeremiah distinctly heard from God, didn't He?  How many times throughout the book do we read, "Then the LORD said to me"?  

How do we put ourselves in a position to hear from God as we make choices, daily choices?  How do we hear the whisper in our ear, "This is the way.  Walk in it." 

I think most of us would agree that we do hear promptings of the Holy Spirit encouraging us to do, and not do, certain things...make amends with that person that you were ugly to yesterday, don't continue a relationship that is leading to no good, visit a friend that has been sick, don't accept too much money in change....those are promptings of the Holy Spirit through our conscience that we absolutely need to pay attention to and obey!   When we have such encouragements to get up and do something, we should get up and do it.  And when He prompts us to leave a situation, we need to get up and leave!  These are confirmations from God not to be taken lightly. 

Jeremiah, though, had clear instruction to get up and start proclaiming to the people of Judah, "This is what the LORD says:"  If we're going to put God's name on the words we're speaking, we better have a very STRONG confirmation that they are actually coming from Him.  And Jeremiah had even more reason to be convinced he had received his words from God.  Under Old Testament law, prophets whose words did not come true were subject to death.  (Deuteronomy 18:20) (That's one way to weed out the false ones...what would our landscape of today's prophets look like if we carried that punishment out?

So!  How do we receive confirmation of what we "think" God is asking of us or directing us toward?  I think we can all say that there have been very few, if any, times of hearing God's voice distinctly speak to us.  And when we think we might be hearing His voice, if you're like me, we still wonder, "Was that really God, or was that just me?  Did He really tell me to go to Hawaii for a mission trip, or could that have been prompted by "some" desire of mine, sitting here in the panhandle of Texas in the month of January?"  Hmmmm.

Here's what I gathered from our study today:  

1. God's directives are very often not what we would choose to do.  Jeremiah did not long to be the guy telling everyone their world as they knew it was about to tumble.  If you find yourself arguing against something that you feel God is leading you to, then you may need to really consider that He IS speaking to you to move you out of your comfort zone and into a new area of use by Him.

2.  His directive becomes a burning within us that we cannot ignore.  Just as Jeremiah stated in Jeremiah 20:9, "His words burn in my heart like a fire.  It's like a fire in my bones!  I am worn out trying to hold it in!  I can't do it!"  When I read this, it seems to me that if God is directing us, and we are seeking Him, He won't drop it.  It will become imperative to us. 

3.  When God tells us something, it happens.  If we truly heard God's voice, then what we heard will happen.  And that confirmation will build a confidence in us so that the next time we "think" we hear His voice, we will have the ability to trust in it.  Does that mean that every time afterward when we "think" we hear God's voice what we heard will come to pass?  Nope!  We will still get it wrong sometimes.  And that can be disheartening.  But when it does come to pass, relish the moment and remember that you heard God's voice...what a gift when God allows us to participate in His story, and share with us a picture, or a promise, of what's ahead.  Sometimes I believe that's a personal gift just between God and us...a secret shared among close friends.  It may not be something we need to share with anyone else; it may just be God allowing us to trust Him a little bit more.  

4.  God's Word is our most reliable source of confirmation.  When we are facing decisions, or wondering if what we thought we have heard is God's direction, we should always weigh everything against the Truth we find in His Word.  We KNOW this is our true and valid source.  If what we think we hear goes against anything in Scripture, then it is not from God, for God doesn't contradict Himself.  So we pray, we read, we meditate and we confer with other Christians who will not just tell us what they think we should do, but will sit and pray with us for us to know, to burn with that knowledge, that God has made His good and perfect will known to us.  

Jeremiah knew.  He knew he had no choice but to do what God was asking of him - to be a proclaimer.  And if we're honest, we know, too, that we should also be proclaimers.  In the New Testament alone, the word proclaim is used 236 times, and in most of those verses it is used as a directive to believers, as in 1 Peter 2:9, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may PROCLAIM the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."

Here's another directive we're given in Jeremiah 3:22, "Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding."    That's a directive that I HAVE heard in my life...return!  "Return to Me...I will heal you"...those are words from God that we can rely on, that we can be sure of.  And I have seen those words come true in my life.  They have been confirmed!  

So while sometimes we're not sure what God is directing us to do, often times we have strong confirmation of what He is asking of us.  Let's not spend so much time wondering about the former, that we ignore the latter!  What He has made clear, let's get busy doing - let's be Jeremiahs for 2024, proclaiming the goodness of our Lord, the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness!