The Through-it-all God
August 26, 2007
Jeremiah 1:1-10,
It doesn’t happen very often but this past Monday at lunch it was happening. Deb was near the end of her rope with our 3 children.
During the morning our 3 precious children had sucked out every ounce of energy and patience that their capable mother had. They had drained Deb to depletion through their numerous activities and the 3 precious ones were asking and wanting more from mom. But Deb wasn’t able to give more. She was dry, empty and running on reserves.
"There’s disarray in every room." I heard her say, "I can’t escape." Part of what was so unsettling for Deb this past Monday was the attitude of the 3. The expectation that mom be all and do all.
Deb felt taken advantage of.
Abused
Violated.
She felt alone and trapped by her responsibilities.
She felt inadequate asking, "What am I doing wrong? I can’t do anything more. Something’s got to change."
When I came home later in the evening hoping and praying that Luke, Ben and Emma would have shown appreciation to Deb, things hadn’t changed. It was just one of those days for Deb.
Somewhere in the course of the evening, she said, "I’ve got to watch the Super Nanny Show, just to make sure that there are worst parents than me in the world."
What so bothered Deb as we talked about our Monday after the fact was not the kid’s behavior, but the powerlessness she felt in doing anything about it in the moment.
What was so worrisome to Deb was not the mess in every room and not the time she had poured into Luke, Ben and Emma, but instead her feelings of complete inadequacy. She wondered if there was something she was doing wrong. We wondered if there was something wrong with our parenting that caused these behaviors from our 3 precious ones on Monday.
Some of you right now are full of advice for Deb and I. You’ve seen how we parent and you’re itching to tell us a few things. If this is you, I’ll listen to your comments later.
The reason I tell of our Monday is to tap into those times and feelings when we feel at a loss to have things go, as we would like. Those times when we feel completely inadequate to handle a situation. Those times when we feel beat-up and abused by a boss, a teacher, a parent, or our kids or a situation or circumstance. We know we aren’t where we should be, but we don’t know how to get to where we need to be. We don’t like how things are but are at a loss to do anything about it.
We know our lives aren’t together and even worse we have a dream as to how they should be, but there is a gap between how we are and how things should be and this gap seems very wide.
Though TV shows, radio programs, magazine and newspaper articles deluge us with inspirational stories of people who have conquered cancer
Triumphed in face of the odds
And surmounted great obstacles
We find ourselves inadequate to make it through a day with 3 kids.
Seniors, after a stint at the Doctors or at the hospital, haven’t you wanted to throw in the towel once the bills begin to come. You can’t make sense of them. The charges seem extra-ordinary. You’re stuck at home, perhaps still not feeling the best, holding a big bill and over there is the due date or your vision of fine health and there is this gap that you don’t know how you’ll cross.
Students, you know of this gap. You know how you did last year academically and you feel the pressure of where you should be with your grades. And there is a big gap between the two and you wonder if you’ll be able to do the work this year.
Or
You know who your friends are and you know the friends you should be hanging with at school. And there is a gap, a large cavern between the two, and you don’t know if change is possible.
Parents, You know the dreams you had for yourself, your family, your kids, your marriage, but your current reality doesn’t fit that picture and you seem powerless to change. Completely inadequate to do anything. We don’t find it hard to recognize our current place/a current situation. And we don’t find it hard to know how we wish things really were, but there is this gap between the two that seems uncrossable.
When we live in these troublesome environment too long, we hear stories like I heard recently from 3 different people.
On 3 different occasions in the last 10 days, people have shared with me the aimlessness/wondering/not purposeful quality of their lives.
In each of these lives, it wasn’t that the person was without an idea of how things should be at work
at home or in relationships but they didn’t know if they could trust God with the gap.
Again it wasn’t that people were lazy or careless, but instead their current circumstances seemed to be so far away from where they believe God wanted them that they wanted to throw in the towel and quit.
They were all to aware at a gap
A cavern
Reluctant to begin the journey to cross it.
It is here that I want to reacquaint us with a man Jeremiah. To help us get reacquainted in your bulletin I copied an introduction to the book of Jeremiah. I’d like to read just one paragraph - paragraph #4.
Jeremiah’s troubled life spanned one of the most troublesome periods in Hebrew history, the decades leading up to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., followed by the Babylonian exile. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And Jeremiah was in the middle of all of it, sticking it out, praying and preaching, suffering and striving, writing and believing. He lived through crushing storms of hostility and furies of bitter doubt. Every muscle in his body was stretched to the limit by fatigue, every thought in his mind was subjected to questioning; every feeling in his heart was put through fires of ridicule. He experienced it all agonizingly and wrote it all magnificently. (Eugene Peterson, The Message)
Another man writes of Jeremiah,
It has often been remarked that Jeremiah’s life was finally a failure. He was alone for most of his ministry. It seemed that no one gave any heed to his words. He was dragged off finally to live his last days in exile against his own will. He was a failure as the world judges human achievement. But a more balanced assessment of him would be that his very words of judgment saved Israel’s faith from disintegration, and his words of hope finally helped his people to gain hope in God’s future for them.
If we had time for a Bible Study on Jeremiah, we’d find numerous texts where Jeremiah’s words of correction, change and reform fell on deaf ears. (Chapter 2 and 7)
We would read that though Jeremiah was being faithful to God and doing just as God desired, Jeremiah’s popularity plummeted (15:10, 11, 17:15, 20:7). He became alienated by the leaders. They even tried to kill him (11:18-23).
And yet this man, Jeremiah was a person who lived alert to God, aligned with God and continued to carry on even when "everything that could go wrong did go wrong." Even when there was a large gap between how things were and how things should be.
Thankfully for us, he writes of his story, his life and in the first chapter he gives us some things for us to hold onto, some anchors, some foundational truths that can help us get through troublesome times.
Jeremiah didn’t have these anchors initially. But he came to learn of them over the course of his life with God these anchors began to emerge.
Jeremiah 1, page 1168-1169.
The first thing he recognized, God was continually coming near to him.
(Verse 2) The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, son of Amon king of Judah.
Notice the second word in verse number 3: Through
Jeremiah writes beginning in verse 2"The word of the Lord came to him in the 13th year of Josiah . . . and through the reign of Jehoiakim."
God’s word. God’s presence was not a single event, was not a single moment, was not a unique and isolated event for Jeremiah.
"The word of the Lord came to him in 13 year . . . through . . . the reign of . . ."
Part of the reason Jeremiah was able to live alert and aligned to God even in troublesome times, times when there was a large gap between how things were and how things could be was for the simple fact that he was aware of God coming near to him. God guiding and speaking to him, through it all.
In my studies this week I learned that this "through" time was 40 years long. For 40 years, Jeremiah knew of God’s speaking and guiding. In the midst of 40 troublesome years, God spoke and Jeremiah heard.
If we would take the time to page through the 52 chapters of this book, you would phrases like:
"The word of the Lord came to me."
"The word of the Lord said to me."
"The Lord Almighty, God of Israel says,"
Jeremiah was strengthened to live as he did because he was aware that the Lord was speaking.
That the Lord was guiding.
That the Lord was involved with him in those hard times.
Rather than Jeremiah getting his mission from God and setting out without checking in with God again, the picture Jeremiah paints is of a relationship in which God spoke, shared, adjusted, formed, shaped Jeremiah over time.
To me Jeremiah’s life with God was more like sailing a sailboat and less like driving a motor boat.
When you are driving a motor boat from point A to point B you can steer right toward your destination, power up the engines and go without being sensitive to wind, waves, tides, etc.
But in a sailboat, you are continually being attentive and watching out for wind changes. You are continually observing waves and clouds. And you make adjustments accordingly.
God speaks and he does so continually adjusting what he says to our current circumstances.
Jeremiah wants it to be known at the very beginning of his book that God didn’t speak to him once, but his God and our God speaks and draws near to us continually.
Jeremiah recognizes that God will be active to bring about exactly what he has said will happen in Jeremiah.
According to my count in verses 4-19, God tells Jeremiah 15 times that he has, he is, or will do for him.
15 times
v. 5 I formed you.
I know you.
I set you apart.
I appointed you.
v. 7 I send you.
I am with you and will rescue you.
v. 9 I have put my words in your mouth
and 6 more times as well.
God is actively involved in the life of his child Jeremiah and wants Jeremiah to know it especially because as Eugene Peterson said – "Everything that could go wrong did go wrong."
But surrounding all that.
Going with Jeremiah as he entered that was a God active
Attentive
And steady and because he was, Jeremiah experienced God.
Friends, we have a God who isn’t idle.
Who isn’t in the wings.
Who isn’t docile.
But is active
Involved
And present.
God tells Jeremiah this.
Psalm 139 told us of this.
Our God especially in troublesome times hasn’t abandoned us, but is present.
The name Jeremiah can mean, "the Lord exalts" and "the Lord hurls", "the Lord throws."
The Lord exalts and the Lord hurls.
I like these two meanings, because in my own life I recognize that the Lord is quite often exalted and praised and glorified when I am thrown into a situation where I have little control. For it is in such times that I am learning to trust and to believe that the Lord is active and will watch over me and use me for his purpose.
Jeremiah begins his book not by pointing out all the ways God used him in his life.
He begins not by listing his accomplishments nor all he did.
No- Jeremiah begins by stating the fact that the Lord spoke to him throughout his life and was active throughout his life.
And because God was, Jeremiah became a participant in God’s divine drama.
This is good news my friends because we are invited to depend not upon ourselves and our own weaknesses and inadequacies but instead to become surrendered to our God’s abilities and promises.
We don’t have to live falsely, acting before our friends that everything is fine.
We can live honestly and authentically, revealing ourselves, our inner nature with the knowledge that God will be active throughout our lives, in all our situations.
Jeremiah expressed his inadequacies.
He could identify them quickly just look at verse 6. And once he did, God told him, revealed to him all the ways that he would fill the gap.
When you and I begin to take this truth seriously, we begin to live lives of hope in troublesome times.
When you and I begin to trust in this wholeheartedly, we become people of strength for those who are struggling.
When you and I take seriously the way God promises to work and be involved in our lives we become expectant and alert to how he will transform and work in circumstances.
These words became real for me during the summer after my senior year of High School when I was strongly urged to get a job at a factory.
Worked in shipping
Deliver parts/get parts.
Transfer molds.
God, I don’t like this
I hate this.
I could be more useful elsewhere.
Time prayed/depended on God wasn’t rescue/relieved.
But I wasn’t hurt.
I tried to live faithful to God even in such a time.
Jeremiah’s life is a testimony of what Jesus would say later.
You will have trouble.
You will be persecuted.
We are not sparred these, but with Jeremiah as our example we can be faithful during such times because we have a God speaking to us.
Through it all.
A God active with his words.
