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Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the
Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Jeremiah 29:7

This week, I’ve been reading devotions titled “The Role of the Church in Cultural Clashes.” It ties in with studying Luke the past couple of weeks and with the focus of The Summit.

How can we be disciples who grow disciples in our community? Jeremiah 29:7 was part of the scripture reading on a day that focused on the “church” being the body of people, not the building where we congregate.
Jeremiah addressed the nation of Israel, which had been conquered and physically moved to an unfamiliar location by its captors. As a US citizen, I have never experienced that type of exile. I’ve never been forced by political powers to live in a hostile and unfamiliar place.

How can I apply this scripture to my life in 2022??
I moved several times while growing up and had little input on the decision to move. I had to learn new school routines, make friends, learn how to navigate a new neighborhood, and adjust to the availability of different types of fresh fruit and vegetables. These are some of the challenges the Israelites experienced in exile. Though I have not experienced political exile, I have walked through seasons where I felt entirely unanchored by everything around me. I have been in a room full of other people and experienced profound loneliness.

There is so much truth to the phrase “misery loves company.” As humans, we have the desire to want people around us to feel like we do. When we are excited and happy, we want to share that feeling. When we are down in the dumps, we want others to sit with us.
As I meditated on this scripture, I began to think of trials in life as being exiled. What would happen if I chose to pray for trials to bring me blessings? What if I looked at loneliness or despair as the wrapping paper for a fantastic gift from God that I didn’t even know I wanted or needed?

The destruction of my marriage is one of the most painful seasons in my life. I have struggled with multiple situations and feelings that seemed incomprehensible. There were numerous times I just wanted to feel better. God put people in my life who reminded me to focus on the gift in that pain. They encouraged me to focus on where God had carried me through difficult times and to claim that same provision in my current situation. In other words, to pray for the city that I had been carried to, for prosperity in that situation would bring prosperity to me.
I look back on difficult times and see where Jesus blessed me through people I thought were adversaries. I was open to finding a gift in an unlikely wrapper. By changing my prayer from “God, carry me through this” to “God, help me see the gift in this situation,” my attitude changed. I felt confident in His provision, especially when I had no idea how it would appear.

Whatever you are walking through, look for the gift. It’s there. Please don’t leave until you find it.

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)

     Have you ever struggled with the fear of failure?  That fear was the slave-driver of every success I experienced until I was willing to make the same journey Paul writes about in the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans.  As mule-headed as I am, I have finally realized that failure is not fatal when I let God transform it into learning.

REGENERATED

     In the seventh chapter of Romans, Paul begins his new life with Christ as a man whose heart, will, and nature has been renewed.  Though he has been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, he explains that he is still in a mighty battle with sin as a power within him even though the sin principle is no longer part of his new nature.  He is a believer who still sins, and so are we. He is a believer who still fails and so are we.

IMPOTENT

     Thank God that Paul doesn’t leave us stuck there!  In the course of Paul’s struggle and failure, God teaches Paul that he is utterly powerless, even with great willpower, to obey God’s law and to stay within God’s guardrails for his life.   When he writes, “I am sold as a slave to sin” (Romans 7:14), we see a man who has come to the end of himself.  But Paul’s failure to break himself free from an endless cycle of sin becomes a way for God to teach him that he needs the daily work of the Holy Spirit in his life.  We are so blessed that this man is so honest or we would have no answer for our own failures to be like Jesus.  How amazing that the answer lies in Paul feeling so awful about his failure to get over the bar!

WRETCHED

    At this point in the journey, Paul is wretched, absolutely devastated, and heartbroken.  His sin has hurt the God he loves, which feels intolerable to a man who spent his life wanting to serve the Lord he once thought he knew.  This is the bad news.  However, the good news is that Paul realizes that his only hope of deliverance is to admit how spiritually powerless he is and cry out for deliverance from “this body of death.”  If you have tried and tried then failed to deal with sin in your life, there is hope! Coming to the end of yourself opens the door to the powerful work of Christ’s spirit in you.

FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT

     When Paul finally connects the dots, he cries out, “Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24). From writing I, me, and my over forty times in the seventh chapter of Romans, Paul now writes, in the eighth chapter that the Holy Spirit is the One who works in believers to give them the power of obedience, victory, and real holiness. 

     You and I can stay in a failure cycle or we can learn to work with the new will that God implants in us when we invite Jesus into our hearts.  Instead of trying to do better, we can train to rely on the empowering of the Holy Spirit from moment to moment.  We can go to church, read our Bibles, and pray, but we will be at the mercy of the demands of our flesh until we ask for and rely on a daily filling of God’s Holy Spirit.  Only then will we have the answer about who will deliver us from sin’s power over us. Only then will God transform failure into learning. Are you ready to let the Holy Spirit move you from groaning to grateful?

Prayer

Abba, I admit I cannot fix myself.  Teach me to ask for Your Spirit to fill me, moment to moment, so I can meet life’s challenges without relying on my own will, energy, and religious self-effort. Please show me where I went off the rails.  Holy Spirit, help me yield to you. Fill me with all that You are.  Amen.

Scripture For Further Study:

Ezekiel 11:19
Matthew 26:41
John 3:6
Romans 7 and 8
Galatians 3:3; 5:16; 6:8

 Have you ever needed a reset?  Have you ever needed to re-group?  Have you ever needed to pick up the pieces of your life?  Recently, after hearing a sermon about the feeding of the five thousand, I was reminded of a time when Luke 6:12 spoke directly to the pieces of my eighteen-year-old self.  

     Like many of my peers, graduating from high school, I mapped out what I thought was the perfect plan for my life.  I would go to Oral Roberts University, study pre-med, attend med school and serve the Lord with my skills as a physician.  That tidy plan was shattered into little pieces by my father’s cancer diagnosis, surgery, and the mounting medical bills that made it impossible to pay out-of-state tuition.  So, in the second semester of my freshman year, I sadly left ORU and transferred to Northern Arizona University. I needed to be closer to my parents and avoid those extra tuition costs.  Life just went downhill from there, or so it seemed.  My roommate had a drinking problem and then suffered a tubular pregnancy that nearly took her life.  She left in mid-semester to recover at home.  I no longer had to listen to her monologues when she was under the influence, but I was also very lonely.  I had not built the relationships the other students had because I had showed up on campus mid-year.  I hadn’t planned to be stuck at NAU, feeling isolated, and struggling with the anxiety that comes when a parent receives a terminal diagnosis.

    I also had not planned for God to show up the way he did early one Sunday morning in March.  I was reading the Bible about the feeding of the five thousand when Jesus’ final direction to the disciples seemed to leap off the page.

When they were all satisfied, Jesus said to his disciples, “Gather up the broken pieces that are left over, so that nothing is wasted.”
John 6:12 (NET)

     I took God at His word.  I wrote about all my broken pieces then offered my hastily scribbled paper up to the Lord.  I prayed, “Dear God, I am putting my broken pieces in Your basket.  Please multiply these broken bits into something useful.  I don’t want any part of this current experience wasted.  Here’s what is left of me, Father.  Please glue me back together.  Amen.”

Anxiety seemed to drain out of me, replaced by the first peace I had felt in a very long time.

My Abba was there with me in that dorm room.  I sat quietly just breathing in His peace.

   The moment my quiet time was over, the phone rang.  A kind and committed Christian guy I had met at ORU was driving through Flagstaff, returning to Tulsa after spring break.  He asked if he could stop by my dorm because his fiancé had just broken up with him.  She didn’t want to be a pastor’s wife and was devastated by the news that he wanted to go to seminary.  When he arrived, I shared the Scripture that God had given me that morning, and he, too, offered his own broken pieces to God.  That commons room at the dorm became a holy place as we prayed together.  God’s presence was palpable to both of us.  We invited God into our current struggle, offered Him our broken pieces, then simply sat there, basking in His presence, letting God carry our burden of hurt and anxiety.

    Hearing Pastor Matt’s sermon reminded me that the moment we recognize God’s presence, our current challenges fade from view and lose their power to define us.  God is right here, right now, even as we look at the pieces of our lives scattered around us.  He does not ask us to pretend they are not there.  He does not ask us to suppress our emotions about them.  He asks us to “gather the pieces that remain,” so that nothing about what has happened to us is wasted.  He enters into our struggle and says, in effect, “Daddy’s here.”

     What pieces do you need to gather?  How are you feeling about them right now? Invite your loving Daddy-God into your equation.  Name your pieces, pick them up, and offer them to God. Ask Him to multiply what is left of you.  Thank Him for not wasting an atom of your past, your present, and your future.  Sit quietly with Him and rest your weary head, trusting God not to forget or mislay a single part of who you are and what your heart needs.  Don’t worry about all those sherds and shards, because Jesus is the One who holds all of life’s bits together.

16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
  [Col 1:16-17 NIV]

Prayer:

     Dear Abby, my Daddy-God, here is a list of my broken pieces.  I am giving them to you right now.  I don’t want to waste this experience, Father.  Teach me how to be “strong at the broken places.”  Glue me back together, Abba.  Multiply what is left of me so that I can take Your love and give it away to others who are dealing with their own broken pieces.  Amen.

     Who is the wisest person you know? Scripture tells us that wise people think and act in ways that make life work.  They build others up and have a deep, reverential respect for the Lord.  Wise people live out the principle that obedience to His design is what re-creates what was lost when Adam and Eve made that foolish choice in the garden. Might you be a wise person? 

     One of the wisest ladies I knew, lovingly etched the wisdom she had learned from God into my hungry little nine-year-old soul.  Her name was Belle Standridge and her words of wisdom still sing a beautiful song in my life to this day.  Belle was kind enough to offer her big, burly upright piano to me for practice since my family had no instrument at the time.  She would patiently listen to me mangle scales and produce torturous versions of the notes written in my piano books, promising me a special time with her if I endured that endless half-hour of drudgery.  After I had done my duty to my piano teacher, I stayed around to meet, in Belle, my own version of “Lady Wisdom” (Proverbs 1:20-33). Belle had been burned in a kerosene fire as a child and received none of the care that would have reduced the massive keloid scars that contracted her arms and hands into a sort of basket.  How she made such glorious music at her piano with those deformities was absolutely miraculous.  She would twirl her piano stool, sit on it, put me on her lap, and invite me to rest my arms on hers as she played one Gospel hymn after another.  I rode those arms, feeling the nuance of every lick she laid down on those keys, absorbing her technique right through my little-girl muscles.  Not only did she teach me to play in-between and around the notes, she wisely taught me about Jesus through that music.

      When Belle explained how the lyrics of those old hymns connected to Scripture and God’s love for me, God was the One speaking. God was holding me as I sat nestled in the embrace of her scarred arms. God was loving me as I leaned against Belle’s 70-something heartbeat and heard words like “grace,” “forgiveness,” and “love” as she sang.  God’s wisdom came through Belle as she shared God’s plan of salvation while teaching me to play “Amazing Grace” and “Love Lifted Me.”  I remember her saying, “Stephanie, play the words, not the notes.  Play your heart and God’s heart.  Let this piano be your altar and your sanctuary.  Let your hands be instruments of praise.  Someday you will offer your musical gifts in church, so don’t forget to pray before you play.”

    As I matured, Belle shared with me how she became so wise.  She immersed herself in God’s Word, often chewing on a thought from Proverbs like a dog works a delicious bone.  As a result, that precious woman lived each day to please her King of Kings, and to love the people God gave her.  I was blessed to be a recipient of the treasures of wisdom God gave her. 

     All of us can become more insightful if we value wisdom as much as King Solomon (1Kings 3:9-12).  Like Solomon, we are to ask God for His wisdom, which is “pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17).  Put some skin on this incredible wisdom and we discover Jesus as “the wisdom from God” for us (I Corinthians 1:40).  All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus (Colossians 2:3).  If we accept this, to seek wisdom is to seek Jesus Himself. 

     Belle personified the “Lady Wisdom” we meet in Proverbs 1-9, gently introducing me to the principle that walking in wisdom would keep me out of all sorts of traps and snares (James 3:13-18). I am slowly learning that true wisdom is found in obedience to God’s loving design found in His Word (Hebrews 13:5).  I have also learned my intellect is woefully inadequate to meet the demands of reality, so I must ask God for His Wisdom (James 1:5). At present, I am re-visiting Proverbs to chew on some the same “bones” that nourished my beloved Belle and made her “Lady Wisdom” to me.  

     The next time you dip into the book of Proverbs, take time to read the first nine chapters and get acquainted with the voice of “Lady Wisdom.”  Then you will be ready to read the wisdom of the elders in chapters 10-29.  How amazing that in the book of Proverbs we can see God supercharging human insight with His vast wisdom!  He certainly supercharged Belle.  Might He supercharge you?

Prayer:

Jesus, thank You for being willing to share the treasures of Your mind and heart with me.  Please supercharge my insight, so that my actions reflect the love You brought into the world.  Help me be wise enough to obey You and build others up. Help me stay within Your guardrails so that I also can be a type of “Lady Wisdom” to others.  Amen.

For much of my life, I lived a spiritually split life. I believed in God, knew of Jesus, went to church, and prayed when I was told. I was a believer in words, but not in my heart. I spent much of my earlier life living for myself and keeping God hidden away from all the pieces that didn’t seem to fit into a “perfect church world”. I really thought that I had to fit into a mold before I could live my Christianity out loud. I believed that I needed to be free of any doubts and sins to have a true relationship with Christ. Because of this, I hid from the God who loves me and lived huge parts of my life without Jesus. 

The fact remains, we can’t genuinely hide from God. God knows even the most hidden parts, and He sees you even when you’re not thinking of Him. When we are living a split life, He sees them both. God doesn’t move from us, and Jesus is always in desire of an active relationship with us. Have you been walking that line between light and darkness? Are you turning down your opportunities to walk on water in order to stay in your comfort zone? 

Comfort is the enemy of growth, and God has not created us to live a life grasping for comfort every chance we can. We believe in a God of MIRACLES, a God of infinite wisdom. Most amazing of all, He is a God that offers us an open door. We can invite Jesus and the Holy Spirit into every single piece of our lives. If you still have doubts, if you’re still struggling with your biggest sins, Jesus wants you! We don’t have to wait for that life-changing, constant, freeing kind of faith. That kind of faith can only come from finally running toward Jesus in every single circumstance, no matter how small or dark it may feel. God wants to be in all of it with you.

Song: 

Jesus At A Distance by Casting Crowns

Verses: 

James 4:8; Jeremiah 33:2-3; John 15:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; Revelation 3:20

“In her deep anguish, Hannah prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly.” ~ 1 Samuel 1:10

 “My soul is in deep anguish. How long, LORD, how long?” ~ Psalm 6:3

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” ~Hebrews 5:7

     What are you longing for right now?  What strong yearnings for what is out of your reach might you be experiencing on this part of your journey?  What is to be done with these aches that sweep over us from often unexpected directions?

     Our longings can open deep spaces within us to the hesed, the incredible mercy of God if, and this is a big if, we learn what to do with them.

Lean In  

     The first step is a big one!  Lean into that longing. Despite the initial pain, admit that your yearning is there. Denying that longing can tie you in knots!  Embrace the idea that you and everyone else were wired for the Garden, but here “east of Eden,” we are feeling the loss of God’s perfect ideal. We were not created to know, lack, or live in conflict with those around us.  We were not created for broken promises and shattered dreams.   We were not created for chaos, shame, and barren lives.  But we were created to enjoy a perfect sense of identity in Christ as we stay within God’s loving, fruit-bearing, bringing-order-out-of-chaos design for us. We were made for more than mere survival, so what do we do with that yawning space between real and ideal?  Hope rises in us when we face those aches because we can invite God to inhabit the gap between what is and what we sense ought to be.  With God in our gap, we can experience longings with hope and without bitterness and shame.  We can cry out our lament without embarrassment, to Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, who understands our broken dreams.  We will be received with His hesed, this mind-blowing ability to love even His enemies, give unexpected favor to the undeserving, and surprising grace to the ungrateful.

Love those Longings

     The next step is to learn to love our longings because those yearnings can draw us to God and a deeper understanding of His original intent for us.  With time, prayer, and good counseling, we can discover where our longings for the Garden became obsessions and addictions.  When we own and appreciate our longings, offer them to a faithful, good God and risk vulnerability with safe others, we take the first steps out of the shadows and into God’s light. Our longings can open our ears to God’s whisper and open our hearts to His comfort and healing.

      The Bible is a treasure-house of stories in which people like Hannah and David leaned into their longings. Instead of burying their heartaches, they gave voice to them in prayers and poems.  You and I can do the same.  We can face the fact that none of us get a pass from the reality that life hurts and unmet yearnings ache. But we can bring our longings to God, crying out our protest that life is not as it should be.  Like Jeremiah, we must lament until we are spent, for that is the moment we will finally make room for God’s hesed. 

Praise     

     The good news is that God lives with us in our raw reality and He does not abandon us out here in the tumbleweeds. Despite not having what ought to be, Jeremiah came to a place of praise when he declared, “Because of the Lord’s great hesed we are not consumed” (Lamentations 3:22).  God’s incredible compassion can help us overflow with the kind of bruised praise that only comes from lament.  Don’t be afraid to lean into your longings and lament, for this act of worship can lead you to praise no longer hindered and tainted by self. This praise-after-lament rises from our broken places making room for a new reality: our Immanuel (God with us) who sees our tears, hears our hearts, and enters into our suffering with us. 

Jesus is still saying, “I will not leave you as orphans.  I will come to you” (John 14:18). 

Your Turn: What do you need to lament?  How willing are you to lament until spent, trusting God to meet you where you are? 

Song for Inspiration:

Written by Danielle King

Have you ever had your plans changed unexpectedly? Who hasn’t? Do you wish you could keep all your plans just the way you make them? Who wouldn’t? There’s nothing like a well-laid-out plan, along with a well-laid-out result, to help us feel the security of being in control. 

Like most of us, I definitely appreciate the security of being in control. I am a planner. Always have been. Plan for marriage. Plan for family. Plan for career. Plan for life. But what happens when the deep-rooted trunk holding the branches of this life is unexpectedly split. Stillness in marriage changed. Family’s emotions strained. Entirety of career ended. Direction of life completely and utterly changed. A UTV accident left me in the hospital for two weeks and without my dominant hand. The path I had thought was ahead of me was gone. Suddenly, my wants and desires I had through the years were shrouded by needs that I never thought I would have. I had never felt such a tremendous need for my husband, my family, my friends, and my God. The emotional and physical pain was almost too much to bear. The new path felt hopeless. I wanted to give up.

That path I have been on this last year and a half has definitely been bumpy. Not nearly as smooth as the one I thought I’d be traveling. I’ve had some smooth spots, to be sure, but these new needs and struggles have left my heart aching much more often than I had planned for. But along with all the new, emotionally draining frustrations I’ve been feeling, I’ve noticed something else. Well, I like to think I’ve been shown something else. These eighteen months have brought tears and pain, but also new relationships and bonds. I’ve turned to crying and anger, but also prayer and friends. I’ve needed doctors and family, but also strength and God.

We don’t all share the same kinds of struggles and pain. But we do share the same fallen world. And as His children, we share the same faithful and loving God, who wants to bring us closer to Him. And He is so loving, that He is willing to stir us up sometimes to get us there. And when we hit one or some of those rough spots on whichever path we happen to be on, God may be preparing you to be used to stir up and comfort someone else who is on a similar path you are on, just a bit behind you.

So I would like to encourage you, when you are enduring that unexpected path change, today or someday, to turn to God and prayer and family and friends and anyone else who is willing to hop in for the ride. Ask God to help you see some of the ways He is working through the struggle. To see how your new needs are bringing about new bonds and relationships; new reliances upon God’s provision and grace; new strength, character, and faith. God knows, as we often forget, that tribulation for His children is what ultimately brings us to Him, to clearer vision of His glory, and ultimately to true Christian strength and joy.

P.S.-Here’s a song that I’ve listened to, almost daily, that has given me comfort, reminding me of how good and faithful God is to carry me through those tough times. I pray it might remind you of how you are loved, and are being carried through both the good times and the bad, and how God is right now, and always, preparing you to receive His joy and to stand in the presence of His glory.

Goodness Of God (Lyrics) ~ Bethel Music