Woven
As I write to you this morning, I can’t help but think about the feelings and emotions of the prophets. Of course, I don’t know what those feelings and emotions are. But, I know how much I hate delivering a message of doom and gloom or a message of “you need to fix this.” It just doesn’t feel good to come at someone with a message that you know he or she needs while you also know they aren’t going to want to hear it. The idea of it feels exhausting to me.
So, as I’m studying, I’m thanking God for the obedience of these prophets to obey God. We get to learn from their messages. And, goodness, I pray we will listen to and follow their instruction more so than Judah/Israel did before the exile.
Read – Woven, Chapter 10, pages 168 (halfway down) through 171 (just the top)
I hope you’re holding your Bible as you read through Angie’s summaries. It’s so interesting to flip through the books and see the name of each prophet. The books aren’t in order, so it’s important (I think) to turn the pages and see where each writer landed in the piecing together of the Old Testament.
I will fight the urge to go back through each prophet we’ve looked at today. I do want to say, though, that Habakkuk is such a good book to read from start to finish. I love the honesty of a man willing to ask, “Are You really going to do for us what You’ve said You will do? It seems as though maybe You’ve forgotten us.” Would we have any real hope for ourselves if we didn’t get to see the writers of Scripture question God’s faithfulness. We have to be real about our feelings toward God. He knows them anyway. This is part of our wrestling. Remember, Jacob taught us that. We wrestle with God while we hold on for the blessing. Habakkuk found it. He got to see that God allows the consequence in order to purify the heart,
Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food…… Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk on my high places.
Habakkuk 3: 17-19
Today, please read Jeremiah 2: 1-13.
The weeping prophet had a lot to say. And, there’s no question in my mind about the reason for his tears. His words point out (over and over) that God commanded, His people disobeyed, and hard consequence was inevitable.
In this section of scripture, can you see what their GIANT sin was? In your journal, would you just spend some time writing about what God’s people did that caused him to respond with consequence?
The sadness in it all is that these people started so well. They’d learned their lesson in the wilderness. They’d learned to take God at His word and trust that His ways are best. By this point in history, they’d forgotten. They began to go their own way, make their own decisions, and choose paths that would lead to destruction.
For my people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
Jeremiah 2:13
Let me tell you what scares me most about this verse. We don’t speak in language like “hew” and “cistern” today, but I get the picture. Water is imperative for life. They didn’t have a faucet like we have, so water wasn’t readily available. Someone would have to go and get the water, so a good container (cistern) was needed. There could be nothing worse than going for water with a broken cistern.
God is our living water. He supplies our every need and depending on anything else is a broken cistern. In Jeremiah’s time, the people were looking to false gods. For Solomon, he was looking to money, work, and women. We tend to look to people we are in relationship with, our children and their achievements, or perfection in homes/cars/clothing. All of it will FAIL us. We have access to a fountain of living water, yet we turn to broken things hoping to store up eternal provision.
Let me share one more word of personal testimony today. During the time period I shared about yesterday, Scotty and I had many conversations (usually during therapy) about his betrayal. I had so many questions that began with “How?” In the early days, I remember that I kept trying to figure out what I/we could have done differently so that this wasn’t our story. I remember one particular day when I must have been in a frenzy of asking these questions centered around how I could have been more intentional about encouraging Scotty and helping him to believe who he was in Christ. Scotty interrupted me with these words, “Amy, it wouldn’t have mattered how much you poured in. There was a hole in the boat.”
Jeremiah was telling the people of Judah that consequence was coming, because their actions revealed there was a “hole in the boat,” and they'd acted out accordingly. What about you? Are you allowing God, the fountain of living water, to fill you each day? Or, do you look to other things or other people? It is the kindness of God that will allow every one of those other things to fail so that we learn to toss the broken cistern and live dependent on Him.
Finally, read Jeremiah 17:1-13 and reflect. These are deep verses that will help us to think about where our hearts could be betraying us. Use your reading and your journal to form a prayer asking God to purify your heart. I’m praying that we will all reflect on these 13 verses for the remainder of our day.
Hey, I love studying God's Word with you, ladies. Keep up the good work. See you tomorrow.
God, thank you for being our unlimited supply of living water. Forgive us for the places we look to others to fill us up. Open our eyes to it in the moment and cause it to make us sick. Help us to free up the people in our lives who we are expecting to be God. Allow us to see their failures as YOUR goodness. In their lack, You want to show us that You are plenty. We can depend on You.
