Speaking in the Light — Don’t Forget What God Really Said!

There have been way too many days when I have begged and pleaded with God for Him to let me in on the specifics about what the heck is going on in my life and what is really happening all around me and why it is occurring in the first place. I wish that the energy that I have invested in my beseeching would have been matched by the answers that would have been flowing out of Heaven but this has not been the case.
God has chosen for reasons that He has not yet revealed to me to not be very clear about my itinerary and more times than not- He’s been rather deliberately fuzzy and distant about the details.
What God has been very clear with me about though is His command for me in all of this to march on and to not give up and to not veer off the main road to the right or to the left. In other words: “Stay the course Rudy and listen and obey my voice of truth that you have heard from my lips! The settings, circumstances and the surroundings that you find yourself in are not the main event. They are just background sets and you must not major on these minors or else you will allow your heart to be detoured away from its main calling.
I am with you always and I will provide for you everything you need just when you need it. Believe and don’t quit. To be clueless in yourself but anchored to Me is not a bad place for you to be for I created with My own hands who you are and I know where you are going and if you just rest in My love for you, I will lead you all the way home.”
Now I hear words like that gently encouraging my weary soul and you would think that I would be set for life, or at least for the next hour. But it only takes minutes before my wayward eyes begin to wander and my fickle ears hear things around me that fully contradict what I have heard spoken above me and before you know it, Rudy’s got the blues once again. If this day and age that we all currently reside in has taught me anything it is that the promises made by human beings ring hollow more than hallowed.
The reliability of our government no matter what political party may reign is questionable. The integrity of our financial system is suspect at best. The security of our nation is compromised. And our children are not safe to even go to school without the threat of harm. Any given day any one of us may be hit by personal devastations such as these. A doctor writes “Diagnosis: cancer,” on a lab report. A judge signs her name to a divorce document.
A family business closes and locks its doors for the last time. A medium-sized company without any warning at all suddenly down sizes to small leaving many unemployed workers in its tracks. A single mother hesitates before opening her mail box, certain that there will be more bills in the box than money in her account. A troubled and depressed 15 year old writes a letter telling his family he can’t go any farther. A husband and father thinks about praying, but doesn’t.
There is an old parable that says: All sunshine and no rain make a desert.” If you never have any down times, dark times, gloomy times in your life you’ll end up as dried up as an old prune. You’ll have no depth to yourself and no substance in your character. It takes both good times and bad times to make a mature person. Life is a mixture of pain and pleasure, of victory and defeat, of success and failure, of mountain tops and valleys.
In a world so apparently defined by tragedy, loss and failure do the words faith, hope and love ring true, realistic or possible? Or do they sound like nothing more than religious fairy tale mumbo jumbo in the face of the overwhelming evidence that shouts to us that there is nothing left to believe in, nothing lasting to look forward to and nothing tangible that can be done to change the outcome?
The greatest devastation for any society is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will become forgetful. We are wandering aimlessly in a deep state of amnesia. We have become so self-focused that we have forgotten what God has clearly made known about the valleys of life and have become deaf to the tales of the others that have been there before and not only survived but downright triumphed in the pit of despair.
I have been reading the Old Testament book of Lamentations and chapter 3 lots lately. Many believers can quote verses 22-26 by memory. If you can’t, here is what it says: “22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
Now the problem is that most readers rip those comforting and powerful sentences right from its context which weaken what Jeremiah was really attempting to communicate. Before we get to the hope- we have to survive the daily hell that this earth can become. Before you can sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” you must learn personally with conviction that adversity is part of the process to make any eternal progress. It can be more than just a little confusing at times to try to figure out the syllabus of God’s lessons.
Getting an “A” in life takes lots more than just showing up for class. The prophet Jeremiah was beside himself and sounds like a man who has no idea what the God he has been serving consistently is up to. I have joined that club! But it doesn’t mean I get cynical. It means I get totally vulnerable and my faith becomes impenetrable and finally indestructible!
Read how Jeremiah got to God’s faithfulness and know that the road was filled with lots more than just sunshine, lollipops and rainbows and roses. “1. I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord’s wrath. 2. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light;
3. indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. 4. He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. 5. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. 6. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. 7. He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. 8. Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. 9. He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked. 10. Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, 11. he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. 12. He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows.
13. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. 14. I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. 15. He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink. 16. He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. 17. I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. 18. So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.” 19. I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”
Notice now that only then does Jeremiah quote verse 21. and what changes everything is to not forget what Jeremiah so and we so desperately need to remember: “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope…” We must not allow ourselves to forget the promises of God! The word of God is one of those treasures that will last forever. The Lord has never made a vow to us that He did not keep. Don’t interpret the signs of the times through what you see, but do it via by what He says.
It is only when we allow ourselves the latitude to get the Lord’s perspective back on our horizon does our own view gain a little more faith on the subject and gives us the daylight that we need to see so that our story doesn’t end in the night! Let God have the final word, even when it is tempting to want to spout off and go your own way! Be honest and be real- but be willing to trust a God who will not forget, even when we do!
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net