Have Your Own Way...

I find myself identifying with the Israelites in Jeremiah again. More times than not, I have thought to myself..."Man this sure does sound like me." Here is what God says, "If a husband divorces his wife an she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return to her?" That's a rhetorical question. Of course he will not return to her, that man would be in modern terms a "whooped" man. God goes on to tell the Israelites that that is exactly what they are doing with God. They have become polluted by whoring themselves out to every other god that comes down the pike.

In verse 2, God asks the question, "...where have you not been violated?" So the question that popped into my mind was, "In what ways, beside the physical, is a harlot or adulterous woman violated?" The mental would be the first place. She has images and thoughts in her mind that will never go away. She can return to those images and dwell on them as often as she wants to and her husband might never know. What a horrible thought. She might decide for whatever reason that she wants to come back home, but when things get tough and she wants to escape, she can imagine in her and go back to the time when she was doing what she wanted to do and enjoying it. There is nothing her husband can do to stop her from doing that except to be exactly who she wants him to be [verses who she needs him to be]. She is also violated emotionally. She is not really sound when it comes to emotions. A harlot has been living by what makes her feel good at that moment. Going to from bed to bed, she has lived for the day. Is it possible to return to being the celibate wife that she used to be? I am not sure. She has also been violated in lifestyle. A wife has duties that she needs to take care of in order to glorify God and lift up her husband. A harlot bails on all of those duties and simply does what she wants to do. I could go on and on if I wanted to, but the fact remains that she has left her husband and is doing what she thinks she should do [by the way, the modern day church came to mind as far as the description of harlot goes.] But perhaps the biggest way that she has been violated is that she has not become worldly. She has entertained the ideas of the world and has become accustomed to finding her happiness there. She has taken advice from the world, which means that she has listened to the world. She has started to look like the world, and for all intense and purposes she is the world. Why would a godly husband want her back?

So there is where I am this morning reading through the first 5 verses of Jeremiah 3 feeling like a pile of poo because in many ways, I feel that I am this whore that God is describing. I often times do what I want to do (verse 5) and have my own way. I end up looking like the world in what I laugh at, think about, partake in, and so forth. Then when the business of the world fades away and I am left with just my thoughts, I start to feel guilty and hurt inside for the way that I have treated my God and the relationship that I have with Him. This isn't on a daily basis but it is more frequent than I would like to admit. No one has to tell me to roll over in the morning and give my wife a kiss...yet I find myself rolling out of bed and starting the day without talking to God. So when I am left with just my thoughts, I tend to do what the Israelites did in verses 4 and say, "My Father, You are the friend of my youth? Will You be angry forever?" In other words, I tend to live by my emotions and come back to God [I know that my emotions are not what I should live by, and that adds to the frustration].

BUT this is where I must interject the truth behind the emotions and the roller coaster ride that I often times feel that I am on. This truth is where I get to lift the name of Christ high in order that He might be glorified. On those days when I do not do what I should and come to God the Father on my knees and seek a relationship with Him...I have a High Priest who did. On those days when I don't stop thoughts from going through my head that shame the name of God because they are sin laced...I have a savior who stopped the sinful thoughts at the gate and told them where they could go. On the days when I give into the sinful thoughts and bring forth physical sin in my life...I have a master who was tempted in all things as I was yet didn't stumble once. In other words, my justification, my righteousness, my holiness, my place with God rests in Jesus Christ alone. It is His Life, Death, and Resurrection from the dead that allows me to sleep at night knowing that the wrath that I stirred up in God that should have been poured out to me has been fully consumed by the Son. There is nothing that I need to fear. Where I fall, Christ excelled. This is to His glory not mine. And I know that this is no excuse to live in and continue in sin (MAY IT NEVER BE!), but it is comforting to know as I am reading through Jeremiah and Identifying with the Israelites.

Humiliation (A Puritan Prayer)

Sovereign Lord, When clouds of darkness, atheism, and unbelief come to me, I see Your purpose of love in withdrawing the Spirit that I might prize him more, in chastening me for my confidence in past successes, that my wound the secret godlessness might be cured. Help me to humble myself before You by seeing the vanity of honor as a conceit of men's minds, as standing between me and You; be seeing that Your will must alone be done, as much in denying as in giving spiritual enjoyments; by seeing that my heart is nothing but evil, mind, mouth, life void of You; by seeing that sin and Satan are allowed power in me that I might know my sin, be humbled, and gain strength thereby; by seeing that unbelief shuts You from me, so that I do not sense Your majesty, power, mercy, or love. Then possess me, You alone are only good and worthy. You do no not play in convincing me of sin, Satan did not play in tempting me to it, I do not play when I sink in deep mire, for sin is no game, no toy, no bauble; Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the Person sinned against. When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me, by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but that in Christ I am reconciled, made alive, and satisfied; that I am feeble and unable to do any good, but that in Him I can do all things; that what I now have in Christ is mine in part, but shortly I shall have it perfectly in heaven.