Friday, February 16, 2024

WEEK THREE - DAY FOUR - THE RIGHT VOICES


Who are you listening to?  Who am I listening to?  Think of all the words that hit our ears in any given day...what is going into our heads and into our subconscious?  Don't think you can filter it all out...we absorb so much more than what our conscious minds relay to us.  Things we hear in a TV show that we know we probably shouldn't be watching enter into our subconscious and unknowingly affect the way we view cultural issues.  Be careful little ears!

As Christians, we should actively be aware of who and what we are listening to.  We need to have keen filters and we need our senses on full alert to make us aware of when we are hearing things that need to be kicked out of our conscious, and our subconscious, minds before they get firmly planted.  When the author of our guide talked about words of straw or grain, I couldn't help but think of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz...his brain was full of straw.  He lamented that he couldn't really think or have ideas.  When we absorb easy words of "straw", we, too, become mindless without the ability to think and discern.  We just start following the latest ideas, philosophies and worldly mindsets.  But when we take in words of grain, we have to digest them.  They go into us and nourish us, they become "brain food."  Our brains are activated to work through tough issues and develop views that are God-based, Word-based.  

We are given three guidelines to help us sort through the voices that bombard us.  Let's consider them as we move forward and see if we can adapt these practices as we actively listen:

1.  Consider the moral character of the messenger!

    Does this mean we rule anyone out that is a sinner?  Well, then we're going to be left with no earthly messengers.  But it does mean that we take into consideration the messenger's lifestyle, their moral code, and the people they surround themselves with.  We are not to judge, but we can certainly be good fruit inspectors!  Look at what kind of fruit they are producing.  Do they have lives that exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?  "Everyone sins, so no one will perfectly live out God's standards; but we should not see blatant discord between a teacher's life and message."  This is tricky, and the really tricky part is that we don't apply differing standards to messengers that we personally like and those that we don't.  

2.  Evaluate the message to see if it lines up with God's Word!

    This is the step where we're asked to measure what we're hearing as to it's value in our Christian lives...straw or grain?  Straw is easy...grain requires digestion.  We can stuff our beds, and our heads, with straw without much effort.  But grain, that takes more effort to actually get into our systems.  What we're hearing on most TV shows, movies, many books, most music are not words that align with God's Word...they are worldly words that make it easy for us to settle down onto a comfy bed of straw and live life just like everyone else is.  Is it really necessary to make life so difficult by introducing that tough old grain into it?  Only if we want lives that come close to the ones our Creator God has designed for us.  I know my nature is one of ease and comfort, but I NEED the rub of the grain to push me to examine my thoughts and my life to see how it is lining up with God's Word.  We must take the time to study the Word of God, for ourselves, to ensure that we know it.  We can't rely on words from another that may have been twisted by them for their own purposes.  That's what the prophets had done to the people of Jeremiah's day - they had so twisted the Lord's laws that they didn't reflect God's character any longer, and the people were too ignorant to realize the difference.  We can't allow ourselves to be that lazy.

3.  Ask the right questions!

    This lines up with Day Two's lesson on curiosity...we have to actively listen and be ready to ask good and probing questions.  "What is the Lord's answer?  What has the Lord spoken?" should be our driving questions as we listen to teaching.  I love what the text author says, "Our approach to God's Word, whether it is taught by a preacher, author, or scholar---in person or in mainstream media...should be active listening rather than passive agreement."  How many times have I heard Christians say, "If ___________________ says it, then that's good enough for me."  Or, "I only listen to ___________________ because I know they are telling the truth."  If we take any person's word for Gospel, then we're setting ourselves up for deception.  There is only one source of truth, and as the first tool above suggests, any person can get off track in their life and their message can change with those course alterations.  We have to actively listen and not passively agree - every word needs to be challenged in our minds so that we can weigh it against Scripture.  Take notes as you listen so that you can go back and look up points where you had questions and to ensure that what the messenger said it was God says.  You may be surprised...and not necessarily with intentional deception, but with your ability to see more than the messenger did.  God may have something to show YOU, that you would have missed had you just sat, listened and left.

The right voices - those that reflect the voice of our Father - are going to guide and direct us homeward; they are going to help us keep our feet on the path of righteousness.  Pray for the Holy spirit to give us clean, open ears so that we can hear clearly His voice of truth.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

WEEK THREE - DAY THREE - CLING LIKE UNDERWEAR!

OK - I didn't pick the title for this day's lesson, and I wouldn't have picked it...but I'm going with it just the same!  At first I thought, "Underwear?  I don't think so!"  So I did a little word study and discovered that the word used in Jeremiah 13:1-11,  'ezowr, can be translated as belt or girdle, but it was the innermost piece of clothing worn around the waist or hips.  So, technically, yes, underwear.  Never saw this one coming!  But, you know, underwear has taken many different shapes and forms over the years...I've often thought it was a good thing I wasn't born when corsets were the prescribed underclothing for proper ladies...I can't imagine cinching up to attain the waist sizes with which they prided themselves.   Ugh!  I can feel a case of the vapors coming on! 

 

The "girdle" that God told Jeremiah to wrap around himself, but to keep pure and untouched by water, represented the relationship that God longed for with His people.  Much like the belt of truth that we are told to encircle ourselves with, was this girdle that reinforced to the Israelites that God had them wrapped in His promises and in His eternal truths.  Their faithfulness to Him, their purity in the relationship would keep that wrap intact.  But they had taken the relationship lightly and had relinquished it in favor of foreign gods and had kept it deeply hidden, hidden in the crevices of distant cultures and religions.  When Jeremiah is sent to retrieve it, the girdle has become "marred" - ruined - because of the exposure to the water and filth of the hiding place.  Interestingly, the word for marred used in Jeremiah 13:7 is the same word used in yesterday's study for the pot that had become marred, "shachath".  So just as the pot had resisted the potter's hand resulting in marring, so had the cloth, the belt of relationship, become rotted due to its mishandling and the disregard shown.  It had not been cared for, it had not been valued...it had been left to rot in a forgotten place, but not forgotten by God.  He remembered and He cared.

He cared so deeply that He couldn't let the hurt go unnoticed or without His discipline. "The pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem" would be brought low and made as useless as the rotted belt.  Where had this pride come from?  How had it taken such complete hold of the people of God whom God had longed to hold close to Himself?  It reminds me of the Christian song, "Slow Fade" by Casting Crowns...

"It's a slow fade when you give yourself away, It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray...

Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid, When you give yourself away...

People never crumble in a day, It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade.

The journey from your mind to your hands, Is shorter than you're thinking...

Be careful if you think you stand, You just might be sinking."


Boy, isn't that the truth?!  It's a slow fade...for Israel, for us.  We give ourselves away to thoughts that we know are not godly and before we know it, our hands are following our thoughts, our legs are walking in sync with our wayward hands and we're marching to a drummer that is not in God's band.  Our pride that says we're doing just fine blinds us to see that we're going the wrong way.  And we wake up one day saying, "How did I get here?"  

That's what Jeremiah wants Israel to wake up and say!  If they would only bend their stiff necks to repentance.  Whenever we ask how we got to where we are, it must be the moment of our repentance...to follow that question with the plea of our heart, and with the bend of our knees, to say, "I'm sorry, Lord!  I want You to wrap your belt of truth around me again...to know that You are everything You say You are to me, and to live for You!  Not for my glory, not for my praise, not for my honor....ALL for YOU!"  How God longed to hear those words from His people of old, but how He longs to hear them from us today as well.  We are just as dear to Him and He has just as big of plans for us as He did for them.  Everything Jeremiah is saying to the people of Judah, he is saying to us...let's open our ears and respond in repentance and such immense gratitude.   Let's honor our God by showing Him just how much we cherish our relationship with Him.  

Underwear?  Maybe not.  Maybe a garment of such high regard that we want to wear it where everyone can see --- fine linen that bears witness to our God who loves us so.

Has anyone ever had such a wonderful Father?



WEEK THREE - DAY TWO - READING WITH CURIOSITY



 Cu·ri·os·i·ty

/ˌkyo͝orēˈäsədē/     noun

  • 1.a strong desire to know or learn something:"filled with curiosity, she peered through the window"Similarinquisitivenessinterestspirit of inquiryinformal: nosiness
Curiosity can be a great driver of learning...the more we 
want to know, the more we will seek greater knowledge and understanding of a subject.  When we approach the study of Scripture, we should be very curious and we should allow that God-given curiosity to send us deeper and deeper into the mine of His Word to excavate every nugget of treasure that we can discover!  If we view our study as a great treasure hunt, where the treasure is one of ULTIMATE value, we won't be able to stay away!  Proverbs 2:3-5 says, "if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God."

Curiosity prompts questions...who, what, where, when and why are the five essential questions of journalism. They're not bad questions for us to ask when we're reading God's Word either.  WHO is this passage addressed to; WHAT is God saying through the passage; WHERE are we in the geography of the world and what people groups and cultures come into play; WHEN is the passage taking place, both in world history and in the chronology of God's great narrative of Holy Scripture; and WHY do we think the Holy Spirit felt this passage critical to be included in all of the words that could have been included in God's transpired Word...all really good questions to ponder as we study God's Word.  

Our study guide offers three simple questions to keep in mind:
1.  What will we learn about God, about who He is, how He interacts with His people and what the verses say about His character?
2.  What will we learn about ourselves, about how we approach God, what He might be calling us to do, how He expresses His love toward us, and what is standing in our way of growing closer to Him?
3.  Is there anything that God is specifically saying about our current thoughts, attitudes or actions that may require change in us?

So comes to us the illustration of the Potter and the clay.  It doesn't seem like that difficult of an allegory - there's a potter and he's working a pot and it becomes disformed so he changes his mind about how the pot is going to look, "as seemed best to him."  So, being the curious students that we are, do we settle for that...do we say, "God is the Potter, I am the clay, He can make me as He wills."  That is certainly a true statement - is that all there is to this story?

Our study guide author points out that the name used for God in Jeremiah over and over again is the name Lord Sabaoth which is translated the Lord of Heaven's Armies, the Lord Almighty, the Lord of Hosts or the Lord of Armies.  "This is the 'military' name of God, for 'hosts' comes from a Hebrew word that means 'to wage war.'  The Lord is the Commander of the hosts and heaven; the stars, the angels, the armies of Israel and all who trust in Him."  God is powerful!  And He has at His disposal all the angels of heavens vast domain.  He rules over nations and over the rulers of nations.  He can uproot nations and He can plant other nations to take their place...and if, in the middle of forming a beautiful pot and it starts going a little "wonky", He can reshape it into whatever He knows is best.  

Unlike the human potter in the illustration who looks at the marred pot and shapes it into what "seems" best to him, God knows without a doubt that when a nation, or a person, that He has called for purpose begins to fight against His hand of shaping, He has the power to reshape that "pot" into whatever is best for His ultimate plan.  Does this mean God changes His mind?  Oh, we could chase that rabbit trail for hours on end, but what I see in this passage, is that God remains fluid in the accomplishment of His perfect plan while simultaneously allowing for our freed will.   While God knows what is to come, He does things in response to our obedience and to our disobedience.  While He knows the actions that He will have to take, they are not what He would have preferred...He would have preferred this pot to have been shaped into the beautiful piece of art that He had imagined when He had first seen it in His mind.  God would have preferred that Israel had remained a nation called to His purpose and obedient to His commands.  But there had been a resistance, and the "pot" had become marred and He changed the His design in response to that resistance.  The earthly potter may have not seen this coming, but our Lord Almighty, knower of all things past and present, certainly sees it coming.  

So for this curious student, this passage is about more than just God shaping us as He wills, it is also a passage of His complete sovereignty balanced against His gift to us of free will.  Of this I am certain, I worship an almighty God who has an eternal plan of absolute perfection.  No one can stop Him from the accomplishment of His great and good plan.  But our choices to resist Him can cause Him to adjust the shape of His plan, never catching Him by surprise, and never causing Him to skip a beat.  And those adjustments never cost Him, but they can certainly cost us.  They can cost us the opportunity He had for us to participate in His beautiful works of art, that one brushstroke of perfection that could have been ours was given to someone else who was ready to obey.  And our life, our pot, took a little different shape than God had in mind for us.  Repentance comes, and we become finished works of art in His breathtaking gallery, but I kind of like to think of God smiling at the little bit of wonky He left to remind me of my stubbornness!

WEEK THREE - DAY ONE - CALLED TO LISTEN!

We've all probably heard the saying, "God gave us two ears and one mouth, we need to listen twice as much as we need to speak."  I need to remember that adage daily!  I'm a jabber mouth....always have been!  I LOVE to talk!  And it's not so much that I feel I have better things to say than others, I just have a LOT to say...there are lots of words waiting to come out on an hourly basis!  

But am I so very willing to listen?  And how do I spend my time with God?   Do I spend most of my time  jabbering to Him about my wants, my issues, my thoughts, when He, the Creator of the universe, is ready to share with me His words over my life...so very much more important than anything I could have to say.  Do I pore over His words of Scripture and allow His Spirit to disclose them to me in such a way that I truly hear with attention and interest what He is saying to me, right now.  

His nation of Israel was always ready to tell Him what they wanted, what their problems were, what they thought about things...they told Him they wanted a king; they told Him they wanted to be like the other nations; they told Him they thought His rules over them were confining and restrictive.  And He says to them, "Shama! Listen to Me!  Be quiet for just a bit and hear what I have to say!"  As our text tells us, shama occurs over 1,000 times in the Old Testament.  God longs for our attention.  He wants us to hear Him, and take time to understand Him.  When we do, all of our objections will dissipate...because we will also hear the love behind His words to us and His good, good intentions for our lives.  

Core to this is what the Hebrew people referred to as the Shema, the fundamental prayer that God had declared in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Listen, O Israel!  The LORD is our God, the LORD alone."  To sit and listen to God and to be able to hear Him, we have to acknowledge Him as the one true and living God, which, in Jeremiah's time was one of the main problems for the people of Judah.  Worship of multiple gods had infiltrated their culture, just as God had warned them.  We have to examine ourselves, too, to ensure that our worship is still confined to the one true and living God, over everything else in our lives.  

Coincidentally, I went to the doctor yesterday.  I say coincidentally, because what he told me was that one of my ears was almost completely closed due to wax buildup.  The other one was completely open.  When reading through the lesson today, I couldn't help but think that's so often descriptive of where I am spiritually, as well.  I'm hearing clearly through one ear, but the other one is having a harder time.  One is open to God's Words to me, and the other one is trying to shut them out.  Life's struggles sometimes shut one of my ears to hearing what God is trying to say to me.  I want to dwell in my own thoughts, my own ideas and His Word doesn't seem to be getting through.  But when I take the time to "clean my ears out" and begin to hear Him through both ears (in "living stereo" as RCA used to say!), I get His balanced message, all completely logical and sensical for my life.  My carnal and limited thought process is infiltrated with His holy and infinite way of thinking that overrides the ways of selfishness and of the temporary.  

Jeremiah 6:10 "To whom can I speak and give warning?  Who will listen to Me?  Their ears are closed so they cannot hear.  The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it." 

This verse seems to describe our current culture to a tee...we are offended by God's Word and we find no pleasure in it.  But that's not the way it has to be.  

"Oh, Father in heaven, hear my prayer....clean out my ears and let me hear You, above all else!  Let me find my true and consistent pleasure in You."  As John Piper has stated, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."  He wants us satisfied, but He also knows that He is our only source of ultimate satisfaction, our Living Water that eternally springs forth.



Tuesday, February 13, 2024

WEEK TWO - DAYS FOUR AND FIVE, AND RECAP OF WEEK!

Playing catch up after battling allergies and subsequent sinus infection...just have felt icky and tired!  I'm sure many others are doing the same thing or worse!  So much flu, RSV, Covid and everything else going around this time of year...praying we all get better quickly!

Day Four of last week dealt with our resources, and in light of the focus of the rest of the week on idolatry and counterfeits in our lives, specifically showing that the way we use our resources reflects what we most highly value.  If there is an idol that is weighing heavily in our life, then it is likely that our money will find it's way to it...just like the saying goes, "follow the money."  But God calls us, as followers of Him, to be people who are utilizing the resources that He has blessed us with to help those who need our help....the  orphan, the poor, the foreigner, the widow and the innocent.  For us today, that may translate into anyone who truly is in need, the helpless and the vulnerable.  I can think of so many categories of people today that our hearts should break for and for whom we should funnel our resources to: the children across the world who are starving or who are in need of just clean water; those who are being caught up in the sex trafficking industry; those without any means of provision of the most basic of needs; refugees being driven from countries which have endured endless years of civil war; women, and men, who are old and lonely, just needing a friendly voice to ensure them that they are not forgotten; the mentally ill and the mentally challenged; and the unborn who need our voice to cry out for their chance to have life!

Are our hearts, and pocketbooks, turned towards these needs over and above our materialistic wants?  If not, we may need an idol check!  I think this is the message of Jeremiah 22:16, " 'He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.  Is that not what it means to know Me?' declares the Lord." 
When we have come to know who God truly is, we will see that He is a God of great compassion, and He asks the same of us.  And then a reminder that all gifts are not monetary---we should also examine the use of our time and talents.  These are all resources that have been gifted to us by God our Father, not for our glorification, but for His.

On Day Five we covered the ways and reasons that we make fakes when we have access to the real.  Why would Israel have done that?  Why do we do it?  Don't we often try to "create" another god when we feel that God has gone silent?  That we're talking to a blank wall with no answers?  When our relationship has cooled (and whose fault would that be?) and when we feel God is distant and far, far away?  Those are the times when it is so easy for us to make a fake...it was for the Israelites as well.  Of course they actually "made" a false god, they carved a wooden idol or bought one formed of gold or silver.  But as we saw in our comparison, their man-made gods couldn't talk or walk; they were made by men; they were perishable and worthless.  In opposition, God is great and powerful, speaking over all the nations; He is alive and eternal, and His wrath will be felt by the earth and those who stand in opposition to Him; He created everything and everything was created for Him; He controls the universe, and He controls every cell in our individual bodies.  How foolish the people of Israel were to worship worthless man-made idols in lieu of Almighty God.  How foolish we continue to be when we worship the idols that we contrive in our minds and convince ourselves that they will give us what we need.  They will never satisfy, because they are worthless and by worshiping them, we, ourselves, become worthless.  We also practice a form of idolatry when we try to modify God to be the god we want Him to be, rather than who He truly is.  He is not our "genie in a bottle" ready to give us our every desire.  Rather, He is our good and perfect Father, ready to give us exactly what He knows we truly need to become the person He designed us to be.  That's when we will find real satisfaction - when we are finally everything that God saw in us when He created us without any of the encumbrances of sin in our lives.  

Trusting in His good and perfect plan for us is where He wants us to live every day.  Trusting Him removes us from the temptation of idolatry.  Trusting Him gets rid of the need, or the temptation, to "make a fake"!

OK - so recapping the week of Recognizing Counterfeits and the Real Deal!  To recognize a counterfeit, we need to know the real thing...stay close to God, read His Word, know His nature, trust in His provision...then when you are tempted to replace Him you'll see that nothing else comes close to what God already is to you.  He is your EVERYTHING.  He is always ready to satisfy our never-ending thirst with an everlasting fountain of Water.  Revelation22:17, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'  Let anyone who hears this say, 'Come.'  Let anyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life."  How can we refuse such an invitation?  

As C. S. Lewis has said, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."  

We keep drawing water from broken cisterns that are polluted and leaky so we can be "self-sufficient", rather than relying on God's pure and eternal fountain from which He is ready to provide us.

Come!  Let's go to the seashore!