Opening your life to God’s Word on a consistent basis over a long period of time will slowly but surely begin to shape your thoughts, perspective, attitudes, and actions. You will start out just reading God’s Word and it will eventually begin to read you! God’s truth will challenge you and help you to see as God sees! Watch how God’s perspective will begin to influence you in ways you never imagined! Stick with the plan! Open your heart to God and He will transform you from the inside out!
In His Love,
Pastor Jerry
You deceived me, LORD, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten. LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have committed my cause. Sing to the LORD! Give praise to the LORD! He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked. Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you—a son!”
Jeremiah 20:7-8, 11-15
I love the complete honesty of God’s Word and the tensions that God’s truth often creates so that we might see the bigger picture of God’s sovereign plan for our lives. In chapter 20, God tells Jeremiah to go and buy a nice clay pot from the potter. God then instructs Jeremiah to take some of the city elders outside the gates. Tell them that because of their idolatry, God is going to bring ruin to their plans and allow them to fall to their enemies. To make sure they understand, God told Jeremiah to break the brand new pot right in front of them and tell them that this is what God is going to do to them. Not exactly a very warm or fuzzy message. The priest is incensed and has Jeremiah publicly beaten and then thrown in jail. A portion of Jeremiah’s prayer is covered in our edevo scripture. Note the schizophrenic nature of Jeremiah’s prayer. At one moment, he accuses the Almighty of deceiving him. Jeremiah is saying: When I tell them what you want me to tell them, I suffer! He then proceeds to call the Lord his mighty warrior and praises Him. Then in the very next sentence, Jeremiah curses the day he was born. I love the brutal honesty in the prayers of those who had staked their very lives on following God! This prayer is not your antiseptic and anemic “Thank you for this day, Lord and be with me” kind of prayer. It is a prayer born out of both passionate surrender to the things of God and the costliness of that obedience. It is the prayer of one who refuses to sit on the sidelines but understands what it means to taste one’s own blood on the battlefield where everything is at stake!
Are your prayers antiseptic and anemic or are they brutally honest….full of passion and desperation? To be saved is a free gift at God’s total expense. But to live for God and walk in faithfulness will cost you dearly! How deeply you are surrendered will be made evident by the prayers you pray. Make a journal of your prayers. Do they reflect the heart of a brutally honest warrior who is caught in the tension of passion and blood for the Kingdom or do they reflect the safe, untouched heart of one who has chosen to be removed from the battlefield?
Heavenly Father, save me from weak resignation and comfortable religion. I want to be in…..all in….fully surrendered to You! May my heart beat fast and my devotion run deep for You. May my prayers be brutally honest and reflect a life fully surrendered. Amen.
Beach United Methodist Church
325 7th Avenue North
Jacksonville Beach, Florida, 32250
904.249.2343