WHEN YOUR WORLD FALLS APART
The Invisible War – Part 7
09-29-13 Sermon
JEREMIAH’S LAMENTATION AGAINST God
Six Steps to Rebuild Your Broken World
1. I must unload all of my ______________
“I
am a man who has seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light; he has turned his hand against me again and
again, all day long. He has made
my skin grow old and broken my bones.
He has surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like
the dead. He has walled me in so I
cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.” Lamentation 3:1-10
(NIV)
verses 17-18, “I cannot find peace; I
cannot remember happiness. I tell
myself I am finished. And I can’t
count on the Lord to do anything for me.”
2. I must turn my
focus _________________________
“The
thought of my pain and my homelessness is bitter poison. I think of it constantly, and my spirit
is depressed. Yet hope returns
when I remember this one thing: The Lord's unfailing love and mercy
still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, so in
him I put my hope.” Lamentation 3:19-26
(TEV)
“The
Lord is merciful and will not reject us forever. He may bring us sorrow, but his love for us is sure and
strong. He takes no pleasure
in causing us grief or pain.”
Lamentation 3:31-33
(TEV)
3. I need to get
alone _____________________
“When
life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear.” Lamentation 3:28-29 (MSG)
Matthew 6, “Find a quiet, secluded place
so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and as
honestly as you can manage. The
focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense God’s grace.”
“The Lord is good to everyone who
trusts in him, so it is best for us to wait in patience—to wait
for him to save us.” Lamentation 3:25-26
(TEV)
4. I change the
things ______________
“Let
us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”
Lamentation 3:40 (NIV)
5. I ask God _______________________
“My
enemies threw me into a pit and dropped stones on me. The water flowed above my head, and I cried out, ‘This is
the end!’ But I called on your name, Lord, from deep within the well, and you
heard me! You listened to my
pleading; you heard my weeping! Yes,
you came at my despairing cry and told me, ‘Do not fear!’” Lamentation
3:53-57 (NLT)
Psalm
34:4, “I prayed to the Lord and he answered me, freeing me from all my
fears.”
Psalm 27:13. “I would have despaired when my world
fell apart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in
the land of the living.”
FEAR = F_____
E_______ A _______ R__________
6. I must expect
Jesus _______________________
“Restore us, O Lord, and bring us back
to you again! Give us back the
joys we once had!” Lamentation 5:21 (NLT)
Verse 24 of chapter
3 says “Deep in my heart I say the Lord is all I need. I can depend on him.”
WHEN YOUR WORLD FALLS APART
The Invisible War – Part 7
09-29-13 Sermon
What
do you do when your world falls apart?
When you get the call and it’s the dreaded word that you have cancer. When the boss calls you into the office
and says “I’m sorry. We’re starting to cut back. You’re fired. You’re laid off.”
What do you do in a time like that? What do you do when a loved one walks out the door? What do you do when someone dies in your
family that was really the pillar in your life? What do you do when an accident happens and all of a sudden
all of your plans are thrown out the door for the foreseeable future?
This
is the question that a guy named Jeremiah asked thousands of years ago. Jeremiah was a prophet in the Old
Testament times in Israel. During
his lifetime he saw his nation decimated.
Here’s
what happened in Israel during his time: The nation went into an economic
crisis, in a tailspin. His land
was terrorized by a foreign enemy.
They actually came in and began to take people out and move them to
another country as slaves. He
witnessed incredible inhumanities done to people and all kinds of suffering. Everybody was out of work and people were
literally starving to death.
During
this time Jeremiah wrote two books – one is called the book of Jeremiah and the
other is called the book of Lamentations.
Most people don’t know about the book of Lamentations. It’s very short.
What
is a lamentation? Lamentation is a
word we don’t use any more. It’s
an old English word that means “to complain.” So you can call this book the book of complaints because
that’s really what it is. To
lament means to complain. When I
unload my sins on God that’s called confessing. When I unload my complaints on God that’s called lamenting. So the book of Lamentations is literally
just a book of Jeremiah’s complaints against God.
It’s
not a real positive book. But in
the middle of it there’s a very positive message on what to do when your plans
fall through, on how to rebuild your life when your world falls apart.
We’re
going to look today at Lamentations 3.
We’re just going to go verse by verse through chapter 3 and look at six
lessons that Jeremiah learned. Six steps that he took to rebuild his broken
world.
Let
me just say this: I hope you don’t need this message right now. I hope your world isn’t falling apart. But you better take notes. Because you’re going to need this
someday. Life is not going to
always be smooth for you. You’re going
to have your life fall apart multiple times in your lifetime. And you need to know what to do when your
plans fall through. So you need to
write this down. You certainly could
share it with a friend this week whether you’re in the crisis right now or not.
We’ll
just start with Jeremiah 3:1. The
first lesson we learn is this…
1. When my plans fall apart, when my world
falls apart, the first thing I need to do is unload all of my frustrations on
God.
That’s
the first step. I just need to
tell God exactly how I feel. You
can complain to God and just express all your grief and your anger and your
fear. Jeremiah, in this book, is
incredibly bold with God. He just
calls God out. He says, “God, I don’t like what’s going on in my
life. I’m tired of this. Enough’s enough. I need a change. You’re treating me poorly.” He complains. And he lets out his anger to God in its full furry.
Let
me just read a few verses. Lamentations
3:1-10 he says this “I am a man who has
seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath. [He’s talking about God] He
[God] has driven me away and
made me walk in darkness rather than the light; he [God] has turned his hand against me again and
again, all day long. He has made
my skin grow old and broken my bones.
He has surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like
the dead. He has walled me in so I
cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains. Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer. He has
barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked.”
That’s
in the Bible. Does that surprise
you? Somebody calling out God in
the Bible? Really he’s just
getting started. He does this for
five chapters. He is just really
complaining to God. And he’s saying,
God, this stinks!
Why
in the world would God put that kind of passage in the Bible? I’ll tell you why. Because God wants you to know he can
handle your anger. He can handle your
frustration. He can handle your
gripes and your grief. Actually this
entire book is one long complaint.
That’s why they call it Lamentations. And he [God] is allowing Jeremiah to blow off steam.
If
I don’t talk out my emotions to God, I will take them out on my body. When I swallow my anger, my stomach keeps
score. When I swallow my emotions,
my frustrations, I take it out on my body. “It’s a pain in the … rear!” How do you think it got there? You swallowed it.
And it went south. Some of
you, the pain stopped in your neck.
Some of you, it went lower and it went in your back. But when you swallow your negative emotions,
you take it out on your body.
God
says it’s ok. I can handle this. Go ahead and just tell me how you’re
feeling. Give me all your
complaints. It’s not fair what’s going on right now. God, I don’t like this in my life. It’s ok to tell God that you’re ticked off.
Let
me show you one other verse, verse 17-18, Jeremiah says this “I cannot find peace; I cannot remember
happiness. I tell myself I am finished. And I can’t count on the Lord to do anything for me.” See how blunt he is, how bold he is?
Have
you ever felt that way? Of course
you have! “God! I’ve had enough.
This is not right. This is
unfair.” God says that’s ok; this is step one to
recovery in your life when your world is falling apart. You need to unload your frustrations to
God.
I
know this isn’t true of you, but when my kids were little they used to have
temper tantrums. When I wanted
them to do something they didn’t want to do or I wouldn’t let them do something
they wanted to do, as little immature children they would have temper tantrums. When my kids had temper tantrums did
that make me feel like less of a father?
No. Did it make me want to change
my mind? No. Did it cause me to doubt myself and
think am I really doing the right thing?
No. Did it make me stop
loving them? Of course not. I just knew that they can’t see what I
see. They don’t know what I know. I am more mature. I know more than they know. And maybe later they’ll thank me for
this. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s the right thing to do so we’re going
to do it whether they like it or not.
I was doing it out of love.
And their temper tantrum did not bother me. It didn’t make me think, oh I’m a terrible parent. No. I just knew they were immature.
God
does not owe you an explanation for everything that happens in your life. God is God and you’re not. And a lot of things are going to happen
in your life you’re never going to understand until you get to heaven. When you get to heaven you’re going to
go, oh! That’s why. Jesus told his disciples, “You don’t understand now what is
happening, but you will later.” Most of the things in
your life that happen to you, you’re not going to understand why they happen on
this planet. And God’s not going
to give you an explanation. Even
if he did you’d still go, I
don’t like it this way. But it wouldn’t change anything.
So
God can handle your temper tantrums.
And he’s not going to love you any less because he can handle your
temper tantrums. He is God. If an imperfect dad can do that,
certainly a perfect heavenly Father can.
Once
I’ve let it all out then you go to the second step.
2. I must turn my focus from my pain to
God’s love.
I
must turn my focus from my pain, my problems, my pressure, my difficulty to
God’s love. I may be ticked off at
God, I may be mad at God. I may be
railing and raging against God. But
I still need to turn and realize that he still loves me no matter what. And as long as I’ve got my mind on my
pain it’s not going to solve anything.
In
verses 19-26 Jeremiah says this, “The thought of my pain and my homelessness is bitter poison.”
He
goes, it makes me really want
to spit! It’s bitter poison. Then he says “I think of it constantly, and my spirit
is depressed.” Duh! Because you’re thinking of it constantly!
He
says, the thought of my pain is like bitter poison. Bitterness is a poison that hurts you. Your bitterness isn’t hurting somebody
else. The person you’re bitter
against, the person you’re resentful against, the person you have a grudge
against, the person you dislike, they’re not even thinking about you. The bitterness is only making you
miserable. It is a self-inflicted
wound. It is a bitter poison. That poison will eat you up.
It’s
a bitter poison. He says, this is not
fair. This is not fair. But he says “I think of it constantly, [Great, you think of
it constantly… How’s that working for you, Jeremiah? Is that making you happy? Making you positive?
Causing peace in your life?
He goes, no.] and my spirit is depressed.”
You’re
not going to get over your depression until you stop being bitter. You’re not going to get over your
depression until you let it go. You’re
not going to stop being depressed until you learn to forgive, until you let it
go. Bitterness keeps you caught in
your own pain and that creates depression.
He
says, the longer I think about it the more depressed I get. Simple. Change the way you think.
They
he says, and here’s the switch where he turns his focus from his pain to God’s
love, “Yet hope returns…”
How
does hope return? When I’ve lost
everything, when my world falls apart, how does hope return?
Hope
returns when I remember this one thing: “The Lord’s unfailing love and his mercy still continue, fresh
as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have. The Lord is all I have, so in him I put
my hope.”
First
off, the Lord’s unfailing love and mercy is still there. Did you know that even when I’m railing
against God, he’s still loving me?
That’s amazing. God, I’m
telling you how life is terrible right now, but you still love me. And the one thing I can count on is your
love is unfailing and it’s as fresh as the morning and as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I need, all I have, so
I put my hope in him.
You
don’t know that God is all you need until God is all you’ve got. So sometimes God allows you to lose
everything. Then you realize, all
I’ve got is God. Then you realize,
that’s all I need. If you’ve got God,
he’s all you need, because he’s going to take care of everything else.
So
I turn my focus from my pain to God’s love.
Verse
31 chapter 3, he says this “The
Lord is merciful and he won’t reject us forever. He may bring us sorrow, but his love for us is sure and
strong. [Underline “sure and strong.” .] He takes no
pleasure in causing us grief or pain.”
Some
people think God is some cosmic killjoy. That he’s some meanie up in the sky, some universal dictator
who just wants to make your life miserable. And that every time he looks down and he sees you having a
little fun he goes, Cut that out! Stop having fun. If you’re smiling he says, Wipe that smile off your face!
That’s
not God. The Bible says “He takes no pleasure out of making your life miserable.”
When
you’re going through pain what is God doing? He’s grieving with you. When you’re going through loss, what is God doing? He’s grieving with you. He takes no pleasure; he’s not sadistic
in any way.
So
what do I do? I unload all my frustration
on God. And then even though I’m
mad at him I remind myself of how much he loves me and I focus off of my pain
and my problems. And I focus on
God’s love.
The
next thing you need to do in rebuilding your life after it’s fallen apart is in
the next verse, verse 28…
3. I need to get alone with God and wait.
Get
alone with God and wait! This is
the third step in the rebuilding process after a crisis, a tragedy, or a major
loss. Get alone with God and wait.
Waiting
before God is a spiritual discipline, a spiritual habit, a spiritual skill. And you must learn how to wait before
God or you’re going to be stressed out most of your life. People who don’t know how to wait on
God are anxious all the time. They
don’t know how to let it go. They’re
always, always anxious. You have
to wait on God. It is the number one
de-stressor in your life.
What
does it mean to wait on God? It
means you sit down and shut up. It
means you be quiet. You wait. You don’t say anything. You don’t ask anything. You just be quiet and you listen. And you have to make time with God every
day. We call it a quiet time where
you just sit down and be quiet.
Yes,
you’re going to read your Bible a little bit later and you’re going to pray a little
bit later. But I’m talking about
literally just being quiet. Most of
you have never sat in silence for ten minutes simply waiting on God. It will revolutionize the level of stress
in your life if you’ll learn to do this.
Lamentations
3:28 Jeremiah says this, [I love it in the Message] **“When life is heavy and hard to take, go
off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear.”
The
reason you feel hopeless is you’re not waiting for hope to appear. Did you know that God wants to talk to
you? He’s trying to talk to you
all the time. You say, I never
hear God talk to me! It’s because
all your circuits are busy! He
calls you and you’re on another line.
You’re listening to your iPod, iPad, radio, tv, smart phone or talking to somebody else. Your life is very seldom quiet. And God can’t get through. All the circuits are busy.
In
order to focus on God and get alone with God, you’re going to have to eliminate
some distractions in your life. It
says “Enter the silence.” **Circle that – enter the silence. What does that mean? Get in a receptive mood. It means to say, God, I want to hear you. I’m eager, I’m ready, I’m willing, I’m
able, I’m teachable. And you enter
the silence.
Jesus
taught on the very same thing that Jeremiah is recommending here in this
chapter. Jesus taught it in the Sermon
on the Mount. He said in Matthew 6,
“Find a quiet, secluded place so you
won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and as honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to
sense God’s grace.”
That
isn’t going to happen unless you’re quiet. And you’ve got to be quiet.
I
want to challenge you to make a commitment for the next seven days. That you’ll say, God for the next seven
days I’m going to spend ten minutes in silence with you every day. You can read your Bible after that. You can pray after that. I’m talking about just sitting in
silence for ten minutes and you just say, God is there anything you want to say to me? And you be quiet. You wait on God. You will be amazed at the strength that
you’ll gain from this.
After
you have been quiet, if you want to read the book of Psalms that’s a good place
to start. If you’d like some devotion
material, read The Upper Room or other devotional guide.
But
notice it says the focus shifts and you actually start slowing down. Have you noticed that life always goes
into slow motion when you’re in a waiting room? Have you noticed how time slows down when you’re in a
waiting room? It doesn’t go fast. When you’re waiting time slows down.
That’s
a good thing. That is a good thing
to slow down because your life runs at such high rpm’s all the time. You don’t ever slow down. You don’t ever be quiet, so the focus
can’t shift.
Notice
what Jeremiah says in the next verse, verse 25, **“The Lord is good to everyone who trusts
in him, so it is best for us to wait in patience—to wait for him to save us.” Wait in patience, wait to save. **Circle the word “wait”. Both times he’s talking about the importance
of waiting. Before you go out and
try to solve all the problems yourself, before you go out and try to rebuild your
life on your own, you need to just sit down and wait. Wait on God to save you.
You
will lose the battle if you do it on your time. The only way you’re going to win this battle in life is to do
it on God’s time. God’s timing is
perfect and he’s telling you to wait. Wait on me!
The
next thing God tells you to do once you’ve said I’m ready, I’m waiting; then
while you’re waiting…
4. I change the things that I can change.
That’s
the fourth thing Jeremiah tells us to do.
Change the things that I can change.
Let
me make this clear: There are a lot of things in your life you cannot change. And you will never be able to change
them. You’re never going to be
able to change your past. You’re never
going to be able to change who your parents were. You’re never going to be able to change the natural gifts
you were given by God or the ones you don’t have. There are a lot of things in your life you can’t change. If you have a certain handicap or you lose
a loved one, you can’t change that.
You’ve lost that loved one.
A lot of things in life you cannot change. And the only way to overcome some things in life is to
simply accept them. Accept them. This is the principle of submission. This is the principle of surrender. This is the principle of acceptance. Peace comes when I accept the things in
my life that cannot be changed. If
I keep fighting about them the rest of my life and say, God, it’s not fair! You’re just going to make yourself miserable. I must accept the things that cannot be
changed.
Faith
is facing the facts without being discouraged by them. “Yeah, it’s bad but I’m not going to be
discouraged by it.” But while I accept
the things that can’t be changed I do change the things that can be changed.
I’ll
tell you what you can change… you! You can change you. You cannot change anybody else so quit
trying to change them. You can’t
change your husband, you can’t change your wife, you can’t change your boss, you
can’t change anybody. The only person
you can change is you. So you start
working on you. What can I change
in me? How can I be better, not
bitter, as my world is falling apart?
This
is going to require some honest gut-level self-evaluation. You’re going to need to do an inventory of
your life. You’re going to need to
do a relational inventory. How is
my relationship to God? An honest
evaluation. How is my relationship
to my husband? To my wife? How is my relationship to my kids? How is my relationship to my co-workers
at work? You do a relational
inventory.
You
do a moral inventory. What are the
habits and the hurts and the hang-ups that are messing up my life? What are the sins, the persistent
things that keep bringing me down?
You do a moral inventory.
You
do an honest evaluation of your life so you can change the things that can be
changed. You say what’s wrong in
my life that I can change?
Jeremiah
says this in verse 40, “Let us examine our
ways [that’s
an inventory] and test them, and
let us return to the Lord.” Repent, return, change
my mind; let us examine our ways and repent.
When
you start doing this, this step four, change what I can change, and you look at
your life, you’re going to realize there’s a lot of unresolved emotions in me. Because when your world falls apart,
things don’t go as planned, you’re a bundle of emotions. You feel grief, you feel anger, you feel
frustration, you may feel regret or maybe a little guilt. You may second guess yourself. You may say, “What if? What if?” or “If only I had done that.” You’ve got all these emotions that you’re
going to have to deal with.
But
there’s one emotion that I’m really concerned about as your pastor that you get
out of your life, because it is the most damaging emotion of all. You know what that most damaging emotion
is? Fear. Fear paralyzes you.
Ann
Landers, in her heyday, would give advice to people in the newspaper. She would receive up to ten thousand
letters a day. She was once asked,
what’s the most common problem people ask you about? She said, without a doubt, it’s fear. The fear of the future, the fear of going
broke, the fear of failure, the fear of death, the fear of being alone. All of the different fears that people
have.
Jeremiah
had a real reason to be fearful. Because
not only was his nation falling apart economically, socially, militarily – falling
apart in front of his eyes; he was a prophet. Jeremiah was a prophet. So as he spoke he was telling the truth about why the nation was
in decline and it wasn’t a popular message. So Jeremiah was very, very unpopular. He had a lot of reasons to be fearful. Because in those days they didn’t have
blogs so they couldn’t just write Jeremiah is a skunk! And by the way, he wasn’t a bullfrog
either! (If you laughed at that
you’re really old!) He was a
prophet. In those days there was
no place to throw verbal grenades at a guy.
So
you know what they did to people they didn’t like in those days? They would put you down in the bottom
of a well and leave you there for a few days, because they didn’t like you. Often it was a cistern which means it
was just a dug-out hole filled with water and the water would be putrid. But they would put you down there.
That’s
what happened to Jeremiah. He kept
saying, “Let me tell you
what’s wrong with our nation. Let
me tell you how to correct the problem.”
And nobody liked what he was saying. So his enemies took Jeremiah and put him in the bottom of a
well.
He’s
in the bottom of the well. The water
is coming up and flowing up over his head. And it says also they threw a bunch of rocks down on top of
him. That’s pretty frightening. He didn’t know how long he was going to
be in there. He had every reason
to be afraid.
And
the Bible tells us this story. He’s
literally in a pit. You talk about
being in a hole; he’s literally in a hole. In verse 53 it says this, “My enemies threw me into a pit and dropped stones on me. The water flowed above my head, and I
cried out, ‘This is the end!’ But
I called on your name, Lord, from deep within the well, and you heard me! You listened to my pleading; you heard
my weeping! Yes, you came at my
despairing cry and you told me, ‘Do not fear!’” That’s what he needed to hear.
I’ve
told you this before. There are 365 ‘fear nots’ in the Bible, one for every day
of the year. Because the one thing
God does not want you to do is be afraid. You can be angry at God. You can be upset. You can gripe. You can complain. You can question. But God says don’t you dare be afraid. You can do all this other stuff, you
can say, I don’t like this. This stinks. It’s unfair. Life is bad. And
you can go on and on. But don’t
you dare be afraid. He says it 365
times – don’t, don’t, don’t be afraid.
So
here’s the fifth thing I need to do.
5. I ask God to relieve my fears.
Do
what Jeremiah did. “I called on your name... you listened to my pleading… you heard
my weeping… You came at my despairing
cry and you told me ‘Do not fear!’”
You ask God to relieve your fears.
You
do what David did. Psalm 34:4, “I prayed to the Lord and he answered me,
freeing me from all my fears.” God wants you
to be fear free. Psalm 27:13. David was going through a tough time. His world was falling apart. He said, I would have despaired. I would have been under. I would have given up. I would have been ready to throw in the
towel. “I would have despaired when my world
fell apart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in
the land of the living.” I believed that God wasn’t through with
me so I wasn’t going to be afraid.
I trusted in God.
You
remember during the height of World War II, FDR said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
That’s nice oratory but it’s a flat-out
lie. Cause there are a lot of
things you have reason to fear, and they’re legitimate fears. There are many things in the world that
you ought to legitimately be afraid of.
In fact, if you’re not afraid of them you’re crazy! Because there are things you have a real
reason to fear in this world. Yes,
you have more than just fear itself to be afraid of. There’s plenty to fear. And everybody has hidden fears. But God says don’t be afraid. I will be with you.
One
of the biggest fears that people have, if not the biggest when life falls
apart, is the fear of I’m stuck and this is never going to change. And this is hopeless and I’m never going
to get out of this. I’m never going
to see sunlight again. The happy
days are over and all the rest of my life is going to be bad news. All my best days are behind me and all
my worst days are ahead of me. It’s
that fear of “Everything is falling
apart and I am beyond recovery! All
the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put me back together again!” That’s fear. And it is FEAR
– False Evidence Appearing Real. It’s a lie.
If
you think that your life is beyond repair, you’re wrong. If you think it cannot be restored, you
are wrong. If you think that your best
days are all behind you, you are wrong.
If you think it’s impossible for God to bring good out of bad, you are
wrong.
Jesus
Christ is in the business of restoration, reconditioning, refurbishing,
renewing and recovering that which is lost. Jesus said, “I
came to seek and save that which is lost.”
Not only you but what you have lost. The Bible says “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: the
old is passed away; the new is come.” So the last thing you need to do to rebuild a broken life, a
world that’s fallen apart…
6. I must expect Jesus to restore my life.
You
need to pray what Jeremiah prayed.
Lamentations 5 “Restore us, O Lord,
and bring us back to you again! Give us back the joys we once had!”
When
you let Jesus bring you back he will give you back. When God brings you back to Jesus he will give you back the
joy.
Jesus
Christ specializes in new beginnings and fresh starts. It’s called being born again. Verse 24 of chapter 3 says “Deep in my heart I say the Lord is all I
need. I can depend on him.”
Prayer:
Will you say that right now? Will you pray this prayer: Dear God,
you know all the frustrations in my heart. You know all the things that I thought were unfair and
unrealistic and the things that I have rebelled and resisted and do not like. I give you all my frustrations. I want to turn my focus from my pain to
your love. You have said hope
returns when I remember this one thing – the Lord’s unfailing love and mercy
still continue. Thank you that
your love for me is sure and strong.
Lord, I want to do what Jeremiah did. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions. Wait for hope to appear. I want to wait for hope to appear. And today, I commit to spending ten
minutes in silence with you every day for the next seven days. Help me to change the things that I can
change. Stop working on changing other
people and just start working on changing me. And most of all, dear God, I ask you to relieve my fears. When I feel I’m thrown into a pit and
the water’s rising and the stones are coming down on me and I think it’s the
end like Jeremiah, I call on your name from deep within the well. You listen to my pleading, you hear my
weeping, you come at my despairing cry.
And you tell me, Do not fear.
And Jesus, I pray as Jeremiah prayed, Restore me, O Lord. Bring me back to you again. And give me back the joy I once had.
Father,
I don’t know all that everybody’s going through but you do. And I know that no matter what the
problem is, you are the answer. So
we turn to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
