Well, once again, we're back with you with another episode of Struggling Well, and our thoughts are going to go this week, Suzi, to the prophet that I find such identifying with in the prophet of Jeremiah. identifying in the sense that he didn't understand what God was putting him through. And if you've read the book of Jeremiah, which I know you have, I actually love preaching through the book of Jeremiah.
you're a strange bird. If you like Jeremiah and you like the book of Jo Hope,
right? And I like Second Corinthians because it talks about Paul's weaknesses and his struggles and everything else because I just think that's life.
Yeah, it is.
And it's a great reminder to me that if these guys are in the Bible and their books written by them and God chose to preserve them, that there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with struggle. Jeremiah was one who voiced his complaints to God quite regularly and quite often and said some pretty hard things. He even talked about how I wished he died at the day of his birth. because he didn't understand what God had called him to do in his speaking on God's behalf as a prophet for 40 years and nobody ever listened. Can you imagine that? For 40 years, nobody ever listened. I know you think sometimes I don't listen to you, but I do.
Well, it's been 49 years, babe. Not just 40.
I know. I know. Well, but in the book of Jeremiah, there is one time that Jeremiah crosses the line in God's mind and God tells him to repent. And it's found in the 15th chapter of Jeremiah. And again, I'm going to read from the message Eugene Peterson's. He's in the midst of a rant about the fact that how he's lived his life has not brought him what he thought it would. And he said, I never joined the party crowd in their laughter and in their fun led by you. I went off by myself. You filled me with indignation. Their sin had me seething. But why? Why this chronic pain? This ever worsening wound and no healing in sight. And then here's the time he crosses the line. You're nothing, God, but a mirage. A lovely oasis in the distance and then nothing. the NLT puts it this way. You your help seems as uncertain as a seasonal brook. like a spring that has gone dry. And then God responds and says, "Take back those words."
Wow.
Repent.
Wow.
Don't you dare say, "I'm not life."
Wow.
So, with all the complaining that Jeremiah did,
Yeah.
God doesn't come and speak to him as strongly as he does in that spot.
No, it's the one it is the strongest response that God has to Jeremiah in I think it's Jeremiah 20 where Jeremia says, "You deceived me. you overpowered me. You overwhelmed me.", and he accuses God of all kinds of things. and yet it's when he says, "You're not life."
It sounds like he has all this confusion, this unresolved confusion that he can't figure out what God's doing.
Yeah. No, he can't. He began that 15th chapter when he said, "What sorrow is mine, my mother, owe that I had died at birth. I hate it everywhere I go. I'm neither a lender who threatens to foreclose nor a borrower who refuses to pay. They all curse me." And the Lord replied, this is what God said in the beginning of that chapter. I will take care of you, Jeremiah. But then Jeremiah goes on to say, you're like a dried up brook. You're like an intermittent spring. You're not life to me. So it's a direct rebuke of God being who he says he will be to Jeremiah that God finally says enough.
Wow.
Repent.
And I don't know further. I haven't read further what goes on for the rest of Jeremiah's life. Can you summarize that?
Well, it's you know, it goes back and forth. It does it's not like life then turns good
if there's a chronology to the book of Jeremiah in the way it unfolds. Jeremiah doesn't get to a place where he think thinks everything's going to go well, but he doesn't ever get to that place of saying to God, you're not life. So, it's like right in the middle of it, and it's still unresolved tensions that he's going to face all the way through to the end of his life. that he's going to wrestle with. He's going to be put in stocks. He's going to be ridiculed. He's going to be laughed at. He's going to be scorned. He's going to be all these things. So,
and he's experiencing all that because He's bringing them God's word. Okay? He doesn't back away from what God said. And later on in the book, there are false prophets when so Jeremiah writes a letter it has become famous for us because we pull out one part of the letter and stick it on plaques and put it in our houses. But where he b where God says basically to Israel, settle down. You're going to be in captivity for 70 years. And there had been a prophet Haniah who had said before that hey no worries two years you're back home.
Ah and that's the part where we quote
plans I have for you plans not to harm you plans to prosper you plans to give you know that came out of you're going to be in captivity for 70 years which meant for an adult who was taken into captivity you're probably going to die in Babylon but I have plans to prosper you not to harm you.
Yes.
So again, it's not like Jeremiah has this issue in the 15th chapter where he accuses God of not being life and God says, "Take those words back. Repent, Jeremiah." In other words, it's not like then everything became a stroll through the garden on a beautiful spring day.
Right.
Life stayed hard for Jeremiah up until the very end.
Yeah.
And yet he never again crosses that line. where he calls God, you're not life.
In your other favorite book, Job.
Mhm.
the same can be said of him.
Yeah.
Job doesn't cross the line.
No, he doesn't. He just wants to understand why, but he never abandons God. He never abandons searching for God to get the answers to his questions of why has all this happened.
and that would be the difference in those two things. Jeremiah goes, "You're not life." Job never says that. He just doesn't understand what's going on. But he gets to the place he finally has his audience with God. And chapters 38 to the end of the book of Job, God questions Job and Job realizes, "I'm out of my league."
Along the same lines, sort of it makes me think of Paul
who went through a ton of struggle and a ton of stuff where he was maligned, he was put in jail, he was beaten and you know, shipwrecked and all these things. And in Paul's writings, he ends up saying in several places, but I'm content whether I live or whether I die.
Right? I've learned to be content. And that's not a I don't think that in those situations that Paul thought there was this destination
called contentedness. He learned to be content, but that came at great cost. And you can't find that and just stay there. It's every day I've got to decide, am I going to be content with the life that God's given to me or am I going to be complaining?
All of these passages to me speak against the whole prosperity issue that if you do this, your life, you're going to get what you want. You just have to imagine it. You just have to trust God for it.
Have the faith to believe it.
Have the faith to believe and then everything will be okay. That theology does not fit with what the Bible says.
No, it really doesn't. And I think it is it's amazing though how much our culture would say that is the way you live your life. You know, you do good unto others, they'll do good unto you. And you do you take this and live this way, it'll come back. it's that whole
pay,
pay it forward type of thing that if you do something kind for somebody, well, somebody else is going to do something kind for you.
And, life is, unique to each one of us.
Yeah.
And we'd like to think of everything in a linear way.
A plus B equals C, right?
1 plus 1 equals 2.
What happens when 1 plus 1 doesn't equal two,
right?
Not all of life is linear in that sense. And that's what makes the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the life of Job, the minor prophets, Hosea, Habachok. It makes their stories so real to me because they understood life the way I find it to be as well,
or I understand life the way they found it to be, I guess, is a better way to put that.
So, I think what I hear you saying to today is that there are going to be major struggles and hardships in life. That is first of all we live in a broken world. So there are the struggles and hardships that come from being in a broken world. But there are times when God will allow you to experience trial, which is to grow your faith, not to destroy your faith. And that during those times clinging to God and trusting him with his steadfast love is what you're challenging us to do.
Yeah. And it's okay to cry out. That's what lament is all about. It's okay to cry out and to say, "I don't understand this." I think where we would get in trouble is when we cross the same line Jeremiah crossed and say, "God, you're not life." And so that's what I would caution us against. Lament, raise my fears, my complaints, my misunderstandings. Absolutely. Just don't ever say he's not life.
You know, in the ESV, he says it this way. Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail? And gosh, I hear that a lot. I probably say it a lot in my head, too, is God, you're cruel. You have deceived me. You have abandoned me. You have and it doesn't fit with the character of God. Yet, you know, we go back to a couple episodes before where it's I want God to react a certain way. And like Keller says and other people have said, if it doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't make sense,
right?
How arrogant.
Yeah.
Whoa. Thank you, Jimmy.
Yeah. Well, that's a lot for us to think about this week. And we want to we do this occasionally. Give some shout outs to our listeners that respond to us.
We need a little music here. D go
go. Roger and Jenny very kind listen regularly tell us that their blood pressure lowers when they listen to us. So I don't know what that means about life but thank you for that. And then a friend who's a newer friend in my life by the name of Griffin
who regularly will send me after he's listened to the podcast something to say, "Hey, thanks for that. Have a great day. So, Griffin, I hope the same for you. Have a great day.
I think there's somebody else. Do you remember who I was going to give it to? Can you whisper it so I can say? I can't remember.
Jamie and Gloria.
Oh, Jamie and Gloria. We just got a text from this couple yesterday or the day before. and they often send encouraging texts to us. and we just want to thank you for listening and for reminding us and encouraging us to keep on doing what God has called us to. We want you to know how much those mean to us and they spur us on. They really do.
So, if you want to send those out, that's great. We love them and who knows, we may even mention you with a shout out at one of our future podcasts. Have a great week.