We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

Stubborn to say the least.

Despite warnings, prophecies, billboards and Facebook posts of that age, nothing changes the minds and hearts of people clearly on a mission to failure.

At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭44‬:‭17‬-‭18‬ ‭NIV‬‬

We all seem to find the reasonings and evidences our prideful hearts seek, despite the truth from experience that stares us in the face.

Rebellion has consequences and for these people, they are dire.

Read all the preceding passages and count the warnings.

God goes to great lengths to curb our enthusiasm for a bad outcome.

It’s like we never grow up, never get beyond ourselves as the center of the universe, always thinking we are right, that ours is the better way.

History, experience, and humility are great teachers.

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭33‬:‭3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The more I think I know,

the less I realize I do.

We use under 10% of our brains.

Science and faith push against that figure through continuous revelations, some by chance, all by divine design.

In God school, through daily bible study and contemplation, our minds open to new thoughts and truths that help to explain the unknowns of our human condition.

Great and unsearchable things.

For instance, early believers were given revelations about the coming messiah, king Jesus, but failed to believe or incorporate it as what we now clearly see by faith as prophetic truth:

In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭33‬:‭15‬-‭16‬ ‭NIV‬

Of course, we retain the right to believe the veracity of these revelations but they don’t require our belief to make them true.

Faith, or the ability to believe something as true, operates outside the realm of empirical proof and is not at all diminished by the absence of scientific evidence.

Faith holds truth that science is not built to measure.

God and his science will continue to disclose great and unsearchable things.

Faith is a gift that gives the recipient a second set of lenses to see beyond the natural world.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

-God will divinely guide us to moral clarity

I will be their God, and they will be my people.

-God will establish a covenant demonstrating his ownership and we will willingly comply and gladly reciprocate.

No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.

-God will complete his mission to all peoples and they will respond with affirmation.

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭31‬:‭33‬-‭34‬ ‭NIV‬‬

-It’s clean slate day.

All remembrances and recalls are cleared to make us new creations.

Resilience. Endurance. Grit.

I have a lot of things to pray for each day. Not so much desires for health or wealth although they matter to my existence.

I pray with an awareness and experience that life is getting harder, not easier.

And the people most likely to overcome obstacles and life circumstances beyond their control are those who are most resilient, most courageous, and who are most gritty.

To become more than conquerors (Romans 8:37) i think describes these types of people.

2Corinthians 4:8-9 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Tough, stoic—the kind of people who learn mind over matter and exercise callings over circumstances.

They hear tomorrow coming and prepare for it, not worry about it. They see a shortage and call it an opportunity to produce. They refuse to waste time, talent, or talk on anything less than a drive for success.

Because what drives them at their core are the verses, pronouncements bestowed upon them long ago. Truths from the OG truth-giver and overcomer who narrated into existence the red letters that will usher us into a kingdom of like-minded warriors who once believed and behaved as though lives then and now depended on it.

Isaiah 40:31

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

True grit.

2 Timothy 4:7

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

That’s what I pray for.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭29‬:‭11‬, ‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Knowing God’s plan for you isn’t the guessing game it often seems.

First, we can know it will all amount to a good outcome. How it will unfold though is usually the scary part.

“For I know” isn’t “For you know,” probably because if we knew how it is to unfold, we might lose trust and not invest in it, fighting against the unknown.

Isn’t that what we do?

Even when the God of the universe offers to take charge, we think our way is better.

Admitting it is your first step.

The second is verse 13. Seek him with all your heart, find, and follow him.

Discovery of his plan for you need not be a guessing game. 

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭24‬:‭7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

It’s been said that every man has a God shaped hole in his heart he longs to fill.

He’ll squeeze in all sorts of things looking for the perfect fit only to find, like a Cinderella slipper, nothing fits quite like the real thing.

That was God’s plan from the start.

We are given a heart to know him.

When we choose to be his people, he chooses to be our god, with all the perks and fringe.

You will leave on many journeys all your life, but only one takes you home. The return trip.

Come home. 

This is what the Lord says:

Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭9‬:‭23‬-‭24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Modesty was once the rule of polite society.

While others might occasionally compliment our strengths or abilities, rarely would you find one obnoxiously boasting of his own achievements.

Wisdom informs us that our greatest strengths, however, pale in significance to the one who endows us with them.

Beauty, wealth, strength or courage are finite and temporary gifts, easily lost and faded over time.

1 Corinthians 1:31: Therefore, just as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

To have achieved the knowledge of God, his nature and purpose is a far greater human attribute for those who dare living beyond the temporal.

Those whose vision remains clouded by the present experience a finite world without God and without ability to imagine their potential self worth as anything beyond present assets and abilities.

Breaking down the implications of this verse isn’t really the heady subject it may seem.

But there are so many lost in the cult of self-love and aggrandizement, fed by heaping helpings of likes and follows, particularly in social media.

Their value is dangerously limited by how well they can leverage the gift over the giver, missing the bigger picture and the point entirely.

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭6‬:‭16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Making smart choices isn’t hard.

In fact, the payoffs are often immediate, if not only for the conscience, but also the outcomes.

Nothing beats feeling smarter than a fifth grader and advancing your best interests as a result.

We’re presented crossroads every day, but rather than choosing what we know will bring about confidence, we engage in inner arguments that yearn to take us off course.

The struggle is real.

We learned at a very young age from Jiminy Cricket: “Always let your conscience be your guide. What’s a conscience? I’ll tell ya…A conscience is that still small voice people don’t listen to. And that’s the trouble with the world today…”

Consciences have consequences.

It matters to whom you listen.

Yesterday afternoon making conversation with a homeless man at church, I asked how his day went.

His reply was profound.

“Another day closer,” he said.

I didn’t expect such optimism.

Here’s a guy living on the streets, no home, no car, no money, no job or food, who I’ve spoken with and tried to help countless Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, who’s moving through this world and every one of his days is another day closer to something.

I suppose I should have asked the next obvious question but I was silenced by his response and immediately preoccupied with my own answer to the same question.

At the end of the day,

to what am I another day closer?

He’d already gone inside for the free dinner we serve attendees at Celebrate Recovery, leaving me alone at dusk, searching my own insides for the best answer to that next obvious question.

Ask yourself.

What on your horizon is calling you another day closer?

To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭6‬:‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The “J” word.

No other utterance throws up walls and defenses quite like it.

I believe it’s not because they don’t believe in J, it’s because J means change.

J means they’re no longer in charge. J means they can’t keep living in gray areas because absolutes exist. J means following instead of leading. J means submission and self denial.

I believe it’s not unbelief holding them back. It’s pride in self, love of self, and the desire to maintain self-direction itself that creates such resistance and the kind of impermeable hard shell finish that’s offended by anything J.

It’s easy to get discouraged when trying to reach these people with the message of J, but remember P and his conversion on the r to D.

Nobody in their wildest dream ever imagined such a thing. But—the word of hope and possibility—J imagined what could happen and it was so.

Be of good cheer.
Jesus overcomes.