WEEK TWO - DAY THREE - COUNTERFEIT CONSEQUENCES

Yesterday we talked about the dangers of counterfeits.  Have you ever unknowingly passed counterfeit bills?  I haven't, but I know of people that that's happened to...and the consequences seem a bit unfair to me.  If you pass a counterfeit bill and it's spotted by an astute clerk, you're the one who gets to come up with real money to replace the counterfeit.  You're the one that gets shorted by the crime.  And when we unknowingly or through lack of attention get taken in by counterfeits thrown at us by the world that steal us of the truth of God, we're the ones who get shorted!  We're the ones that have to look to God and say, "I got duped!"  Now, THAT has happened to me...and I really want to be much more mindful of the "goods" that I'm accepting into my life now and screen out all the counterfeits that are going to rob me of God's real and good gifts that He has ready to give to me.

One consequence of accepting counterfeits in our lives is that it leads us into slavery - slavery to the sin that so easily entraps us, an entrapment that sometimes holds us tighter and longer than we could have imagined when we fell into it.  When we get caught up in sinfulness, we take serious setbacks in our relationship with God, setbacks that can be recovered, but not without a lingering guilt that our enemy will be able to use against us long after our sin has been forgiven.  Much like leaving artillery and military equipment in an area troops have departed from, we have left effective weapons for our enemy to use against us in the future.  Knowing what we have left behind gives us the ability to counter those future attacks, with the knowledge that the Holy Spirit within us is on our side.  But the attacks will come, and had we never accepted the counterfeit, we could avoid those particular battles.  This is not the life that our Father God wants for us...He would love to see us living lives free of unnecessary battles.  That's why idolatory in our lives, choosing counterfeits over Him, makes Him angry....He knows the consequences.  

Idolatory, which as I stated yesterday I believe is most often self-worship, can take many forms and come to us via many different avenues.  There are warning signs, though.  The words, "I want", "I feel", "I think this or this or this will make my life just a little bit better”, and when those things are superfluous to our actual needs or the needs of our family, we should stop and analyze what is driving that desire.  If it's something that really, truly is going to be good for us and our family, and prayer confirms that direction, feel good about it and move forward.  But if, after prayer and asking for God's clarity, we realize this is something that is really self-serving, self-pleasing and our motivation for the change, purchase or the course of action we're about to take is anything other than God-pleasing, we need to abandon it quickly and ask God to set our feet on His right path that leads us to lives of freedom and peacefulness, rather than the captivity and turmoil that our enemy would love to see us entrapped in.

Jeremiah's audience had opted for the "I want", "I feel", "I think" mentality....”I want what they say Baal can get for me...all the stuff!"   "I feel that God's way isn't working for me, and I need to explore other ways to have a better life."  "I think offering children on an altar may be the thing that changes our lives!"  While Jeremiah is saying, "STOP!  You're accepting lies and counterfeits and God has given you the truth!  Follow Him!  Abandon your man-made idols and turn back!"  

We are to want God and His plans for us, feel His love, and train our minds to take every thought captive for Him.  Back to surrender of self -  all about bowing to Him.  

Do you wonder why our idolatory makes God so very angry? It's like when our kids deliberately do things we've told them not to and we can see the very hard path they're headed for...we want to shake them and tell them how stupid they are being, because we know the heartache they could avoid if they will listen to us.  Well God loves us more than we love our children, and His shaking can feel pretty rough at times and His chastisement can sound hurtful ("the whole human race is foolish and has no knowledge"...that's pretty much the same as stupid, isn't it?) - but He loves us enough to get our attention.  And just like we embrace and hold our children when they ask us to forgive them for ignoring us, God is even more ready, more loving, with an embrace that completely wraps us in His love when we turn, repent and ask Him for forgiveness.  I think that's the moment when we truly recognize just how fake the counterfeits have been!  Nothing can compare to the embrace of our Heavenly Father.  

WEEK TWO - DAY TWO - SPOTTING A FAKE

I've let myself get a day behind and now I realize that my power cord for my computer has become powerless!  Don't you hate it when THAT happens!  So my laptop's battery may go dead shortly and I'll be done until I can get back home with a new power supply.  (As I write this, I'm feeling it very personally...like maybe it's me that is in need of that power supply...running a little low today!  Lord, help me through and give me what I need to do what I need to do!)

Today’s lesson is on counterfeits, and spotting them.  I'm sure everyone has heard the story of how FBI agents are trained to spot counterfeit money...by studying in detail real money.  Same is true for our relationship with God and with the things that try to steal us away from Him...the more we know of Him and the complete and absolute satisfaction that He brings to our lives, the quicker we will identify the counterfeits that creep into our lives.  HE is the only reality and truth that makes our lives make sense, and I believe we will feel incomplete in our lives until we allow Him to fill our souls with His Spirit.  That's when we begin to truly live the lives He created us for...that is the Living Water that satisfies forever.

What are the counterfeits that are trying to trick you into acceptance of something lesser than what God has ready for you?  So many things in this current world of ours are available to us that can make us think, at least for a little while, that we are satisfied.  The next big business deal or job promotion, the house that we've dreamed of and finally moved into, children that have just been accepted into the university that we feel certain will assure them of a wonderful future, reservations made for that long-awaited trip with our spouse....these can all be very wonderful achievements, and in themselves absolutely nothing wrong in enjoying.  But if these goals take over our lives and consume our thoughts and demand our every minute of attention, then we have made our goals our gods.  If we put aside God and His intentions for our lives in order to attain these earthly, and temporary, goals, they have indeed become gods in our lives, robbing us of the real thing.  

If maintaining friendships, maintaining our ideal body or maintaining our homes become our "most important things", then we move those good and healthy habits out of things that are admirable into places of inappropriate priority.  

As quoted from Timothy Keller, he identifies idolatry as "anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” Personally, when I hear myself say “ I couldn’t live without________”, I stop and realize that I have probably made whatever that is into an idol.

So what do we do when we realize we’ve been duped? How do we trade in our counterfeits for the real thing?  Again, quoting Keller, “ we need to offer them up,. We need to find a way to keep from clutching them too tightly, of being enslaved to them. We will never do so by mouthing abstractions about how great God is. We have to know, to be assured, that God so loves, cherishes, and delights in us, that we can rest our hearts in Him for our significance, insecurity, and handle anything that happens in life.”

Nothing else can give us that kind of satisfaction and security! I think it’s time to throw our counterfeits into the fire, and allow God to hand us the real fortunes that he is ready to lavish us with!  Not fortunes of earthly value, but those that will sustain holy fire and follow us into eternity. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). To build on goals of His design and of which He lays the foundation.

WEEK TWO - DAY ONE - FORGETFULNESS

Oh my!  I'm not sure I want to spend today on this subject!  The older I get, the more it is a factor in my daily life...forgetting where I laid my iPhone, where did I just put my glasses...oh is that appointment today?!?  Anybody else over 65 relate?  Sometimes I think we were always forgetful, we just become more conscious of it as we get older because it becomes a concern to us.   At least that's what I'm telling myself and I give you permission to claim that as well!  I love the quote today's study highlights on this subject, "God knows our tendency to forget and calls us to intentionally set patters in our lives to help us remember Him."  My forgetfulness is not unique to me and yours is not to you.  Israel was a very forgetful nation - and they forgot stuff that I'm SURE I would remember!  Things like the parting of the Red Sea...I mean that's pretty memorable!  But over the years, as the story passed from generation to generation, the impact of that parting and the magnitude of God's displayed power had faded and the memory was lost in the dry, Judean winds.  As a result of their forgetfulness, they became open to the ideas of the nations around them, ideas that were contrary to the commandments given to them by God to worship ONLY Him, only the One who had rescued them and brought them out of captivity and had entered into a covenant relationship with them.  When we accepted Christ as our Savior and put the name Christian onto our lives, we too entered into a covenant with God - to put Him first, to relegate all other loves and interests in this world to places beneath Him.  Do we also forget our covenantal promise?

What are the things that lure us away from placing God first?  Striving to have more stuff?  Wanting to be in a certain circle of friends?  Wanting our children to have everything that every other kid has?  Wanting to take that perfect trip that everyone is talking about?  Spending too much time watching the current top binge-worthy series?  Just wanting what we want all the time - no matter what it happens to be in the current moment?  We can make stuff, popularity, our families, pleasure, entertainment idols...but most of the time it simply comes down to US - we are our most prevalent idol.  Self!  The most tempting idol of all, and Satan knows it.  Why would a parent offer up a child on an altar to an idol?  Only if they had put themselves on a higher plane than their child and they thought such a sacrifice could be to their advantage.  Why would any healthy mother abort a healthy baby?  Because she values visions of her future life more than that of her child and sees what is actually a blessing from God as a disadvantage to herSELF.  When you really stop and think about it, every idol we set up, we do so because it feeds our own selfish interests.  And our idols of self-interest give us all kinds of reasons and rationalizations not to do what God asks of us.

I think we're back to surrender and submission - the crux of the Christian faith.   Surrender of self, submission of our agendas, and tearing down of all the idols that we allow to creep in and take our eyes off of our God and Father.  And that brings us back to our subject of today - the forgetfulness of our covenant relationship and the reasons to have active acts of remembrance.  Daily time in the Word, daily prayer, regular church attendance, taking of communion and steady conversation with our Father who loves us so much.  These are all acts of remembrance that combat our human (and Satan influenced) tendencies towards forgetfulness.  Be deliberate and be diligent in remembering!

Talking about remembering...how about this week's verses to memorize:

"Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies!  On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed.  But the God of Israel is no idol!  He is the Creator of everything that exists, including Israel, His own special possession.  The LORD of Heaven's Armies is His name!"  Jeremiah 10:15-16

That may seem long, but if you take it phrase by phrase it really flows together easily.  Start out by saying that idols are worthless and ridiculous!  We create them to feed ourselves.  But they will all come to an end...because we serve a God who is not an idol but the Creator of everything, even Israel and especially Israel.  He is the Lord of Heaven's Armies...powerful and over all!  Meditate on that, and then say it once more:

"Idols are worthless, they are all ridiculous lies!  On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed, But the God of Israel is no idol!  He is the Creator of everything that exists, including Israel, His own special possession.  The LORD of Heaven's Armies is His name!  

Why do we look to anything else to satisfy our needs when we have the Creator of us, the Creator of the universe, telling us that He cares for us, that He loves us so much that He would do anything, including the sacrifice of His Only Son, to bring us back to Him, to allow us to be with Him for eternity.  Everything, anything, else is worthless and ridiculous...Holy Spirit help us to keep our eyes on our Father, and on our Savior, Jesus Christ!  You are with us.

WEEK ONE - DAY FIVE - WHITE FLAG ANXIETY and RECAP OF FIRST WEEK!

As I sit down to my laptop this afternoon, a myriad of problems that I want God to intervene in right this very minute are on my mind:  a friend whose husband is in the ER with severe bleeding into his lungs; another whose husband has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer; my sister-in-law who is in rehab following surgery for a broken femur and who is also battling cancer; a friend whose one child is facing divorce and another who is struggling with financial issues; and multiple family issues of my own where I want God to act...fast...like right now!  I want God to take my prayers seriously...they are important!  And they demand His attention and His intervention quickly...does He get it?

Jeremiah had the same concerns.  Did God truly understand what He was facing and was He ever going to do something to help him?  His words recorded in Jeremiah 15:18 reflect his inner turmoil and his uncertainty as to God's help: Why has my pain become unending, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You truly have become like a mirage to me— water that is not reliable.  Can you relate?  Things that we pray about for what seems such a long time, and we don't seem to get any answers.  Remember, Jeremiah preached for 40 years without getting the results he was praying for.  And the thing we come to truly love about our friend, Jeremiah, is that he doesn't hold back when he talks to God...he tells God just how he's feeling.  We can too!  

When I'm discouraged with life, I can tell God that.  When I'm discouraged with God's involvement in my life, I can tell Him that too!  Jeremiah told God that he felt like God was a mirage to him...how could he know if God was even real?

Did God chastise Jeremiah for his discouragement and for his complaints?  No, He answered him.  He told him in verse 11, "Surely I will deliver you for a good purpose..."; in verse 21, "I will save you from the hands of the wicked...".  

How do we translate God's promises to Jeremiah to our problems?  We can rely on the good plans that God has for us, and for others.  We can be assured that no matter what we are going through, He is ready to show more of Himself to us through these times.  He will protect us and save us from evil when we surrender to His good ways.  Sometimes, rather than praying for all the problems to be fixed (and fixed posthaste, if You don't mind, Lord!), maybe we should be praying for more of a revelation to us, and to all those going through these problems, of God and His purposes for our lives...to grow through the times of trials so that we can carry with us the knowledge that, no matter what, God is always with us and He is reliable to care for His children.

This is "white flag anxiety"...the point where we're called to surrender our lives into God's reliable hands and the reluctance we have in doing that.  Is He truly good and Is He truly able?  YES and YES!  This is the essence of faith...trusting it all to our Holy Father who loves us.  

This brings us to the point where we reconsider our memory verse for this week, Jeremiah 15:16, "When I discovered Your words, I devoured them.  They are my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear Your name, O LORD God of Heaven's Armies." And the following verse, "I never joined the people in their merry feasts. I sat alone because your hand was on me. I was filled with indignation at their sins."  We studied that Jeremiah did two things in his time of seeking...he devoured God's Word and he kept to himself, not conforming to the ways of his contemporaries, not bending to the sinfulness of his society.  We would be wise to follow his example...keep ourselves submersed in the Word of God and don't allow ourselves to be influenced by bending to societal norms when they are in opposition to what God has asked of us.  As stated in our study, "We should be women who draw others to our God rather than women who are pulled away from Him by our culture."  Amen to that!  

So!  What has our first week of getting to know Jeremiah taught us?  When we review Jeremiah 1-5 what are the lessons we have taken away?  

Here are my bullet points --- feel free to share yours!

• We are known by God from the very beginning of our lives - within our mother's womb.  He knows us, He cares for us, and He has plans for us!
• We have no excuses that will stand up against God's calling for us.  Whatever He is asking of us, we're wasting our time arguing with Him about it!  He knows us - and He still asked us to participate.  What an honor...no matter what the request is...let's start bypassing the excuse hour and begin by smiling in anticipation of what we're about to experience with God by our side!  "Get yourself ready!"
• Remember what God has already done for us (loved us, sent His Son for us, forgiven us, promised us eternal life, and showered us with earthly blessings along the way) and retain our first love.  Don't exchange our glorious God for worthless idols, don't exchange springs of living water for man-made cisterns that leak!
• God will not be mocked, and He will not allow His children to continually live in rebellion.  He will discipline both for their good and for their growth, and for His integrity.  If we turn our backs on Him, we can either confess our rebellion to Him and repent, or we can expect His judgment to come upon us.  He has taught us this principle, just as He had taught it to Israel, and He is true to His Word.  
• HE is the cure for our sinfulness and our backsliding; we cannot do it on our own.  We have to surrender to Him and allow Him to plow up our hardened hearts and to replant (transform) us so that we can grow into the women He has designed us to be.  Without God, we are senseless children with no understanding, skilled in doing evil. (4:23)
• While God disciplines and while He brings destruction, He always leaves something to come back to...He always leaves us with hope of renewal.  The people of Judah heard these words, "Yet even in those days...I will not destroy you completely." 5:18.  We have this glorious hope in eternity, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away." Matthew 24:35  "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared."  Revelation 21:1.  God always gives us the hope of our next home.
• Be the ONE person!  Be the person who deals honestly and seeks the truth.  Be that person whose God's eyes land on when they are ranging throughout the earth looking for those who earnestly seek Him!  Never give up, even if you're standing alone...because you're never alone..." 'for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the Lord."