Deuteronomy 7:9, “So know that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God. He will keep his agreement of love for a thousand lifetimes for people who love him and obey his commands.”
Our nation's current conditions seem a bit chaotic, don't they? More and more people are becoming cynical of our government and politicians. We seem to be catering to every new agenda in a “woke” society, the good guys are losing, and the bad guys keep winning. There is hate, crime is up, and wars are breaking out. If this isn't bad enough more and more people are turning away from Jesus and His promises. Looking around it would seem more things are going wrong rather than right. How can we continue to live like this and not lose hope? Lamentations has the answer.
Back when Jeremiah the prophet was alive, he too had seen his share of a chaotic out of control nation. The temple had been burned, food and water had been depleted and disease was spreading rapidly. Parents were eating their own children just to survive and if you were lucky, you were carted off to Babylon into captivity (a truly sad time when captivity was luck). Yet amongst all the chaos we read a beautiful passage of hope from Jeremiah.
“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed; because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in him!’ the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for salvation of the Lord… for the Lord will not cast off forever.” Lamentations 3:21-26, 31.
Yes, we live in an uncertain world, but this passage has given us a few certainties we can rely on.
First, there is mercy in the middle of pandemonium. And the Lord's mercy will not be consumed because His compassion will not fail. What a statement; Jeremiah was surrounded by death and destruction, and he said in full faith, ‘This will end.’ One of my mother's favorite statements to me when I feel my life is unraveling (usually it was with my kids), she would say, ‘This too shall pass’, and it always does.
We will all face mayhem, confusion, hardship, heartache, suffering, battles, and storms but Jeremiah’s words can bring us hope. God's covenant love (mercy) will be given to you, and He will act in love for you. He's got your back.
The second phrase of hope in chaos; Gods resources will match your requirements. “God's mercies are new every morning.” Every morning you can wake up knowing there will be a fresh supply of God's love and mercy for you. The only catch, like manna, you need to take the time to gather it. Start each day filling your storehouse with God. That begins with prayer and spending time in God's Word. Trust God to give you whatever you need each day.
Notice how Jeremiah could still write ‘great is Thy faithfulness’. He was surrounded by the smells of burning buildings, rotting flesh and cries of the people dying, yet he could claim, ‘great is Thy faithfulness.’ Maybe we need to shift our focus of the things around us onto God's faithfulness in the midst of mayhem. Every day God is keeping His promises to you and me. You get to eat, you wake up each day, you can still afford gas, you have friends and family you can hug (maybe even some fur babies). These are the great faithfulness’s of our God!
Jeremiah's last words of encouragement: God's delays don't always mean God's denial. In these few verses Jeremiah used the words hope, and wait, five times. Being a prophet of the Lord, Jeremiah knew destruction would come and he also knew restoration was going to come after years of captivity. Knowing this he expected God to act and gave Him room to do so in His timing.
We may not be a prophet, but we have been given God's Word to know the chaos we are in has been predicted. We also know through studying God's Word we have been promised freedom from it all, there will be an end. We just have to be like Jeremiah and hope and wait, allowing God to act in His time.
No matter what pandemonium we are in the middle of in this country we need to let go and trust God. Recognize His mercies in the midst of chaos, grab hold of all His resources each day and trust that His ‘not yet’ simply means He will be back to make everything right. Sit tight and be patient, this too shall pass.
The Bible needs to be important in our daily lives, although can be hard to discipline ourselves to build this new habit pattern. From the Scriptures, we get our spiritual food, we learn who God is, we learn what God’s truth is, and we reorient our thinking to what God says. Let's continue to some well-known verses in the Bible and see what we can learn from God and faith. Hebrews 11:23-40
Study 22, Hebrews 11:23-40- https://www.docdroid.net/ddTITdH/study-22-docx
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