Tag Archives: jeremiah

Purifying Fires

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One of the best things to come our of our difficulties – and sometimes the only good thing – is the repentance that takes place as a result.  Trials are perfect times to clear the conscience.  Suffering in the present can prepare the way for a deeper, more fulfilling, more committed Christian experience in the future.  And there need not be any glaring, awful sin in our lives to take advantage of this process.

Take the example of Jeremiah.  If there was anyone in Jerusalem who had conducted himself uprightly in the days leading up to the city’s destruction, it was him.  The prophet was likely the man closest to God in the entire place.  Yet he includes himself in a call to repentance after the ruin arrived.

“Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the Lord;
Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.
We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.”
          – Lamentations 3:40-42 (NKJV)

Repentance and growth are closely tied together.  Sin at any level or in any amount is not worth holding on to.  Our fellowship with God is much too vital to allow it to drift into the distant past.  The moment of greatest difficulty provides the greatest motivation to turn from even the smallest sin and draw that much nearer to Him.

God’s Selective Memory

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Here’s a little encouragement from the book of Hebrews. 

On the one hand, the Lord remembers all of your faithful service:

For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. ” – Hebrews 6:10 (NKJV)

On the other hand, He has decided to forget all of your sins:

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” – Hebrews 8:12 (NKJV)

And just in case you happen to forget that last fact after reading it once, the same truth (quoted from Jeremiah 31:34) gets repeated just two chapters later.

Then He adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.'” – Hebrews 10:17 (NKJV)

Let’s give the Lord this day much in the way of ministry to remember and nothing in the way of sin to forget!

Encouragement from the Lowest Pit

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Bad experiences make us twitchy.  The more of them we have, the more we tend to expect them.  The more often we fall, the harder it is to look up.  The lower we get, the more we need some form of encouragement – someone to give us a reason to be brave.  If people cause our bad experiences, people begin making us twitchy.  As bad experiences multiply, so do our fears.  If we have a wide assortment of difficulties, it’s easy to believe that God Himself is behind them.  With relief we can say that He’s not.

When things were at their worst – and then got even worse than that, our hero Jeremiah prayed and heard God’s voice in response to his desperate cry.  As he shares his story, if we identify with his trouble, may we also take courage as we share his encouragement.

My enemies without cause
     Hunted me down like a bird.
They silenced my life in the pit
     And threw stones at me.
The waters flowed over my head;
     I said, ‘I am cut off!’
I called on Your name, O Lord,
     From the lowest pit.
You have heard my voice:
     ‘Do not hide Your ear
     From my sighing, from my cry for help.’
You drew near on the day I called on You,
     And said, ‘Do not fear!'”
                    – Lamentations 3:52-57 (NKJV)

Inevitable Compassion

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When things are looking very bad, the one thing we perhaps fear the most is that they will never look good again.  Diving into this bottomless pit of awfulness is is self-destructive.  We have permission to rejoice.  As long as we’re looking to the Lord for help, this worst case scenario will never be true. 

Once again, Jeremiah leads the way in seeing light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel of gloom.  If it was bad, he saw it.  If it was difficult, he endured it.  And he was no superman – he cried and griped often along the way.  But when it was all over and he was right in the midst of a well-desevered lengthy lament, he just couldn’t help but observe the following, leaving us with a profound message of hope: 

God’s compassion is inevitable.

“For the Lord will not cast off forever.
Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.”
– Lamentations 3:31-33 (NKJV)