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."

WEEK ONE - DAY FOUR - DEFINING SUCCESS

"I follow God = everything should go well for me."

Even if we aren't adherents of a prosperity gospel theology, doesn't that idea subtly infiltrate our thoughts and affect how we think things should be going for us?  Well, our friend Jeremiah counters that erroneous idea throughout his trouble-filled life.  Jeremiah lived a life which, by the world's standards, could be considered the epitome of failure.  He had no family, no friends and preached to a non-responding audience.  The altar call produced no throngs repenting of their sins.  Rather, they ridiculed him and plotted to kill him.  How would we view a modern-day evangelist that prompted such a response?  We would certainly think that God's favor was not upon him, and we would probably join those who ignored his message.  Does this scenario invoke a sense of warning to us...could it be that we're paying attention to the wrong people.  Have we become like those in 2 Timothy 4;3, "For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine and accurate instruction [that challenges them with God’s truth]; but wanting to have their ears tickled [with something pleasing], they will accumulate for themselves [many] teachers [one after another, chosen] to satisfy their own desires and to support the errors they hold," Amplified Bible.  We cannot judge the validity of the message with the size of the crowd (large or small) ...we can only judge it by it's adherence to God's Word. 

And just as we evaluate our spiritual teachers, we must also look at how we're evaluating people in general.  Do we have an eternal perspective when it comes to those that we are holding up in high regard?  Are we elevating people based on their levels of education, wealth, standing in the community, or any other standard based on earthly status?  If so, we're not listening to Jesus' words in Matthew 5 as to who will be highly regarded in eternity.  This chapter is the perfect example of the upside-down theology of Jesus...everything gets reversed.  All of our futile, earthly regard flies out the window when we enter into eternity and those that were overlooked here are rewarded greatly there.  And I can see a smiling Jeremiah leading that parade!  The weeping prophet no more!

Good time to review our weekly Bible verse!  "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!  Jeremiah 15:16"

Good time to review, because reading through Jeremiah 4, today's passage is tough!  Tough reading, tough understanding....just tough!  I guess this is one of those passages that when we devour it, we have to spend a lot of time chewing on it!  Like a piece of tough meat---30 chews per bite before we can swallow it.  This is a chapter that I had to dig into and look at commentaries to start developing my thoughts.  Remember, commentaries and "my thoughts" are not Scripture...but they can make us start thinking in deeper ways and allowing God to open our minds as we then go back to Scripture and ask God to truly see His meaning.

My problem with Jeremiah 4 was that it seemed that God started out by saying, "If you will return...", as though He was allowing Judah another chance to repent and turn, but then by verse 3, judgment is pronounced and in verse 28 He announces, "I have decided and will not turn back."  Jeremiah even says in verse 10,  "Alas, Sovereign LORD!  How completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem by saying, 'You will have peace,' when the sword is at our throats!"  So, did God renege on His offer of repentance?  Did He switch midstream and throw Judah under the Babylonian bus?  That is not the God that I have come to know through the rest of the Bible...there has to be more to this.

By reading Matthew Henry's commentary (fyi Matthew Henry died in 1714...his words have been around a while, but I still find his insight helpful to me when a passage is hard for me to get through), he instantly helps me by pointing out that verse 1 is addressed to Israel, while verse 3 is addressed to Judah - two different people groups.  Henry believes that verses 1 and 2 would be more appropriately included at the end of Chapter 3 than the beginning of Chapter 4.  We have to remember that chapter breaks were not in original Scripture writings and have been inserted over the years of Bible translation.  So, sometimes, we need to look at the end of the preceding chapter to get the true flow of the entire passage.  This seems to be the case here.  

So if we attribute verses 1 and 2 to Israel and their state of affairs, then starting in verse 3 we can move forward with Jeremiah's words to his homeland of Judah, who unlike Israel to the north, is still experiencing prosperity and good times.  Jeremiah tells them that God has told them to plow up their unplowed grounds and don't sow among the thorns...these words probably mean something to a farmer, but for those of us who don't come from that background, what do they mean?  My paraphrasing comes to: Tear it all up!  Break through your hardened hearts that haven't been touched by previous warnings and get out of all the thorny entrapments in which you have allowed your lives to be swallowed up.    Or as Matthew Henry puts it, "We must pluck up by the roots those corruptions which, as thorns, choke both our endeavours and our expectations."  I think Jeremiah is telling them, don't expect any change if you don't change the ground in which you're planted.  And God says if they don't do this, there are "hot" times coming!  His wrath will be poured out like an unquenchable fire, because of the evil they have done.  God does not take pleasure in the discipline of His people; but He also cannot allow His people to abide in deliberate evil and let it go without His notice and His response.

But what about that troubling verse 10?  Hear what Matthew Henry has to say about it: "Now, was it God that deceived them? No, he had often given them warning of judgments in general and of this in particular; but their own prophets deceive them, and cry peace to those to whom the God of heaven does not speak peace. It is a pitiable thing, and that which every good man greatly laments, to see people flattered into their own ruin, and promising themselves peace when war is at the door."  Prophets, who unlike Jeremiah were more concerned with their own popularity than with God's truths, had told the people all was well, and the people had believed.  (See Jeremiah 23:16-19)  

But what had God told them from the very beginning, " 

Deuteronomy 28:1-6  "And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out."

15-18  "But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out."

The Judeans cannot claim God had not been clear with them; they cannot claim that He had not repeatedly warned them.  In Jeremiah 4:18, it is declared to them that their own conduct and actions have brought everything they will experience on them.  But in verse 27 is our ray of hope when God also declares that while the land will be ruined, He will not destroy it completely.  

God is a god of return, of hope and of eternal promise.  While Jeremiah has harsh words and words of judgment, he doesn't leave out the words of hope.  How do we think God is looking upon our world today if He was so angered with Judah for turning their back on Him?  How can we expect any lesser judgment than He pronounced upon them?  We don't know God's plans for us, but we know God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7) and our world is getting pretty brazen in its mockery of all things holy.  Will we see earthly judgment prior to Christ's return?  We certainly could.  Could our lives be turned upside down as the Judeans lives were?  They certainly could.  And how would we react?  Would we blame God for abandoning us, or would we realize just the opposite was the cause?  And would we see that ray of hope that God would still be showing us, a return to Him through obedience and faithfulness.  

Or would it be possible for us to hear His words of warning to Judah and apply them NOW, as He begged them to do so He does not have to bear down on us with his rod of discipline?  Would we be willing NOW to plow up our hearts and not put any more effort into the thorny soil---maybe even the thorns of our worldly standards of success---and replant into good, fertile, faithful, godly soil.

Jeremiah speaks to us...will we listen?

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!

WEEK ONE - DAY TWO - SURRENDER AND POPULARITY

It was wonderful to run into a Bible study mate today and first thing she said to me was, "When I discovered Your Words I devoured them.  They are my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear Your name, LORD God of Heaven's Armies.  Jeremiah 15:16."  And she said that verse without missing a beat!  What a testimony to the JOY of studying God's Word together when we can greet each other in that manner!

But today is one of those days in reading God's Word that just doesn't seem quite so joyful.  We're talking about surrender, we're talking about popularity (or unpopularity, as the case seems to be for Jeremiah), and we're talking about painful warnings of dire discipline as written in Jeremiah 2.  Where do we find the joy in those kinds of subjects?   All we can do is to dig in and see...and to start by praying that the Holy Spirit will enlighten us to see the full scope of God's message to us for today.

First off - surrender!  How many of us really think that Jeremiah had big dreams of being a prophet of doom and gloom?  He was just as human as any of us and probably dreamed of a happy life with a family and friends.  But after his calling in Chapter 1 and his failed arguments with God, Jeremiah picks up in Chapter 2 by going and proclaiming all that God tells him to.  Surrender.  Surrender of dreams, surrender of goals, surrender of self.  God knew the man that he had selected - He always does - and Jeremiah committed himself to the life that God laid out for him.  One of my favorite verses is 2 Chronicles 16:9, "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him."  God's eyes had spotted his man Jeremiah, and Jeremiah was fully committed.  Let's pray that God's eyes will rest on us when He is looking for those with committed hearts ready to carry out His purposes!  Full commitment equates to total surrender.  What are we holding on to?

Second - popularity.  It's something that we may not consciously think about as we grow older, as our study author pointed out, but it's a factor, still.  As much as we may deny it, we all want to be liked and we all want to be held in some degree of regard.  And there's nothing wrong with that, unless it becomes our overriding goal, forcing us to compromise our obedience to God in order to maintain a certain level of status or favor.  Jeremiah's instructions from God put him in a place of great unpopularity - it's hard to tell people that they are about to be overtaken and that their best chance of survival is to surrender to your mortal enemy and have them call you their BFF!  There could have been a sitcom (a not very funny sitcom) of the time, "Everybody Hates Jeremiah!"  But Jeremiah's commitment to God and his surrender of all else allowed him the freedom to do whatever God asked of him.  Think about that kind of freedom - that's the true meaning of living for an audience of One!  Hearing God's lone clap as we finish our dark and desperate soliloquy of warning to a sinful crowd. Living for that clap and hearing the accompanying words, "Well done, good and faithful servant", as earthly popularity falls to a very, very distant second place.  

And third - those words of Jeremiah 2!  Wow!  As I read them, I could not help but think how they are SO applicable to the world we love in today.  It's a fairly lengthy chapter, but I couldn't pause in my reading of it.  God talks through Jeremiah and reminds His people of the devotion of their youth - they had started out well, they had been in close relationship with God.  What had gone wrong?  "They followed worthless idols and become worthless themselves."  First thing gone wrong - they forgot all that God had done for them (bring them out of slavery and into their own land of promise) and abandoned Him for the worthless idols of the sinful nations around them.  Do we tend to forget all that God has done for us while we find ourselves preferring to live our lives of comfort and pleasure?  Putting things and the enjoyment of things over and above the One who has provided us with everything that we have?  All of a sudden we find ourselves saying those smug words, "I've done pretty well for myself, haven't I?" Oh, haven't we?  That's just when we are on the precipice of worthlessness!

In verse 8, God proclaims that everyone that should have been responsible for ensuring Israel's faithfulness had failed - the priests, those of the law, the nation's leaders, and even the prophets, had all failed in their personal faithfulness leading to the apostasy of the entire nation.  We cannot depend on any type of leadership to keep us faithful.  Don't look to religious organizations, don't look to the government and don't even look to those proclaiming God's Word to keep you faithful - they may, and often do, fail.  YOU stay faithful.  If the people of Israel had rejected the poor leadership they were receiving and if they had continued to worship God faithfully, there would have been a different story.  But when God says in verses 11 and 13, "My people", He is not just addressing the leadership.  They've all rejected Him.  They've all turned and gone their own way.  They've rejected the living water that God has offered them in favor of man-made cisterns that will soon dry up.

God's words are chilling when He says in verse 19, "Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the LORD your God and have no awe of Me."  As I said yesterday, we've lost the idea of giving authority of our lives over to God - it's exactly the same as when God says in verse 20 that Israel has stated, "I will not serve You!"  Bold-faced rebellion!  That's where we are, no awe of God and hearts that are turned against Him.  

He goes on to describe the depth of our rebellion - verse 25 could be paraphrased as saying, "It's no use!  I love what I love and I have to have what I love!"  Isn't that pretty much what our society has come to?  No boundaries, no limits, if we feel we need it, want it, desire it - then there's no fault in going after it.  Even if God has said it's a "foreign god" that will lead us to captivity.  No, we're smarter than to be bound by the provincial rules of an outdated "god"; but then our Egypts and our Assyrias prove to be disappointing allies and we find ourselves right where God told us we'd end up - captive.

All of Jeremiah 2 is a warning, a proclamation of God's judgment over His people, and one of the reasons for His judgment is due to their denial of their sinfulness, their refusal to see their guilt and God's anger with them (verse 35).  We are doing the same thing!  We are saying that we're "basically good people" while living lives of godlessness.  We are saying, "God wants me to be happy" while doing things that God has told us He is not at all happy about.  Bottom line:  God is not pleased when we are sinning.  Admit it!  Admit that sin is not where God wants us and that we need Him to rescue us.  That's when we are freed!  That's when the captor is defeated.  Isn't it interesting to think about what would have happened had Judah listened to Jeremiah's warnings and heeded them.  We could be reading an entirely different rest of the book!  And isn't it interesting to think about what would happen if every Christian in America would hear the same warnings and decide to surrender and allow God to have full authority over their lives.  If the rest of the nation could see that kind of change, who knows the impact over the future of our country.  It starts with us.  

Is that the joy of this chapter of God's Word?  The possibility of change?  The knowledge that you and I have a part to play in God's ongoing story?  Pretty incredible, isn't it?  Did Jeremiah know we'd be reading about him almost 2500 years later?  

God's eyes...ranging throughout the earth.