Missions Paul

It will be okay.

JEREMIAH 17

Joss Whedon, screenwriter-producer famous for films like Toy Story on being asked if he had hope that the human race is becoming smarter and better. Whedon said: “What’s going on in this country, and many countries, is beyond depressing. It’s terrifying. Sometimes I have to remember who I’m talking to. I’ll say something about how terrible things are, and meaningless, and the world is headed toward destruction and war and apocalypse. And at one point my daughter goes, “Hey! I’m 8!” She doesn’t want to hear that stuff. But I can’t believe anybody thinks we’re actually going to make it before we destroy the planet. I honestly think it’s inevitable. I have no hope …. I want to be wrong, more than anything. I hate to say it, it’s that line from The Lord of the Rings-“I give hope to men; I keep none for myself.”
Many like Joss have this fatalist impression and prediction for our future.
“Faith is confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in his power, so that even when his power does not serve my end, my confidence in him remains because of who he is” —Ravi Zacharias,
To those in despair today, it will be okay.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him, v7.

Thomas Smail said: When the prayer made in faith is not answered, and the healing for which many have sought does not come, we are not to look for someone to accuse of failure in faith. Rather we are to remember that besides faith there is hope. Hope has to do with God’s promises that are still future and hidden, just as faith has to do with God’s promises that are here and now. To the person who has believed for today but has not seen the answer come today, there comes the call to hope. Hope says, “Tomorrow also is God’s. Enough has happened already to assure you that the rest is on the way.”

Is God mean?

Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years. Can you think of the patience of God for 40 years? God was waiting for one drop of repentance from His people who had ended up living such wicked lives away from Him. It never came.

JEREMIAH 16

Out of context it looks like God is mean. Jeremiah you must not marry.
We are still early into this 40 year ministry and I am sure Jeremiah must have wondered why God was commanding such a thing. God had been saying some strange things, telling Jeremiah not to pray for these people anymore, but now this is very personal. He is already a very lonely, suffering and frustrated prophet, but now God gives another restriction.
Jeremiah will never experience the joy that many have. He will not get married. He will not have children. Some may look at this out of context and interpret that if you are committed to a cause then you have to sacrifice. Jeremiah is single but can give himself more to the ministry. It is out of context. It makes God look mean and it is wrong.
Just keep reading a few verses in from this prohibition and you see the love of God.
God was saying everyone would go through terrible persecution and suffering, no one in the land would be exempt, it will be horrid, death will consume their nation.
Jeremiah would not have to watch the people he loved, his wife and his children go through this. He was being spared additional grief.
God was withholding not because He is mean but because He loves. He knows the future. Jeremiah I am sparing you pain not withholding pleasure for the sake of it.
What do you feel God is withholding from you?
He is not mean. He knows the plan for your life and sometimes that means He has to hold something back from you so as not to bring sadness to you. One day looking back you will see the withholding hand of God was His sparing hand.

TEN MISSIONARY AWARDS

It seems that every month we are able to watch some awards ceremony for different achievements.
However there are many unsung heroes. Missionaries, disciples of Christ, scattered around the globe who every day face life with spiritual and moral courage. You may be one of them. Yet no one notices you. You just do the same thing every day, in an environment which is at times very challenging.
Isaiah prophesied judgment and exile but Jeremiah saw it happen.

JEREMIAH 15

Jeremiah experienced great discouragement as a prophet, no one was listening! They were about to come under judgment for many reasons none less than the sin of Manasseh, sacrificing his own sons, reintroducing idol worship and God’s people followed! From this chapter I would like to hold an award ceremony for the faithful.
The ten missionary awards will be given:
1) For those who feel forgotten, v15.
2) For those who are persecuted, v15.
3) For those needing vengeance from God, v15.
4) For those who because of the struggles have lost the joy they once had, v16.
5) For those who look back at the excitement of their call, v16.
6) For those who are not the most popular in the neighbourhood, v17.
7) For those who experience pain, whether physical, emotional or mental wounds, v18.
8) For those who in their doubts of God pray to God, v18.
9) For those who choose to return to their calling, to their belief, to their God, v19.
10) For those who have been strengthened in the circumstance not rescued from it, 20.
Of course there isn’t such a ceremony, but one day there will be. That day the award will go not to us, but to Jesus, the victor. We will gladly lay our crowns down before Him. He takes all the awards.

HOPE

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, author of “Made for Goodness” was answering readers questions in the TIME magazine.
Q: After all you’ve seen and endured, are you really as optimistic as your book, ‘Made for Goodness’, says you are?
Tutu: I’m not optimistic, no. I’m quite different. I’m hopeful. I am a prisoner of hope. In the world, you have very bad people—Hitler, Idi Amin—and they look like they are going to win. All of them—all of them—have bitten the dust.

JEREMIAH 14

In the midst of the betrayal of God’s people and the impending judgment that was coming, Jeremiah prays earnestly, “O Hope of Israel ….” v8-9.

Hope is more than optimism. There may not be any hopeful aspects of a situation which optimism clings to. But hope is found not in a situation but in a Saviour.

Hope is more than being positive. There may be no moving forward, no direction and no increase. But hope is found not in progress but in a Person.

O Hope of Israel, its Saviour in times of distress …

How can we say this today?
In the situation that you may be in, how is that possible?

…. You are among us, O Lord … v9.

In his book ‘Deserted by God?’,Sinclair Ferguson shares the following story:
“The first physician to die of the AIDS virus in the UK was a young Christian. He had contracted it while doing medical research in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. In the last days of his life, his power of communication failed. He struggled with increasing difficulty to express his thoughts to his wife. On one occasion she simply could not understand his message. He wrote on a note pad the letter J. She ran through her medical dictionary, saying various words beginning with J. None was right. Then she said, “Jesus?”
That was the right word. He was with them. That was all either of them needed to know”.

So we can pray today:
O Hope of my life
Saviour in times of trouble
You are with me now.

Boots on!

JEREMIAH 13

1. Buy a belt and put it round your waist.
2. Then go on a journey which will be approximately 400 miles and will take you 6 weeks to get there and hide the belt.
(Once he had done that he came back to resume his real work.)
3. Now repeat the whole process: walk back another 400 miles to rescue the belt and find it is useless.
Then come home.
A 1600 mile walk!
Have you ever found yourself doing something that you didn’t think you were called to do or didn’t make any sense?!
Well how about we word it in a different way?
1. The prophet’s belt would symbolise God’s authority on his message as with Elijah and John the Baptist.
2. Hiding the belt so far away will get Jeremiah away from the death plots.
3. The authority of Jeremiah’s message was rendered useless and so was the people rendered useless because they had not listened to him. This was God’s message after a 1600 mile walk!
Did it really need 1600 miles?
We are often in the place of not knowing what God is actually doing with our lives.
He is either protecting us or promoting His message through us or both!

Maybe it is time for those walking boots to be brought out!
Just do what He is asking even if you don’t have all the details.

No one said it would be easy!

No one was listening.
They didn’t change their lifestyle one bit.
He was being plotted against.
Even people from his home town, wanted him dead.
On the verge of giving up, he appealed to God to do something.

JEREMIAH 12

Surely God makes things easier.
That’s the gospel isn’t it?

“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”, v5.
This is God’s answer followed by some worse news:
Your own family are against you.

We need to find a way through the thickets and be able to compete with horses. That’s the point. This Christian missionary life is tough. God wants us to find a way to overcome, to keep going.
The way is stamina.
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” Churchill

Tired of Jeremiah already?!

11 chapters in and maybe all his heavy prophesying is getting way too much. No one likes a hell, fire and brimstone man, not for a morning devotion anyway. So what can we do? We can shut the Bible or read from a different section, something lighter and more positive. Jeremiah’s generation tried to shut him up just like perhaps we are tempted to do. However, they plotted to kill him to permanently remove him, akin to us ripping out the book of Jeremiah from the Bible altogether!
But they did not count on the watchful gaze of God. He showed Jeremiah what he could not see, the plot to kill him and that it came from members of his own home town.
5 small questions to answer today:
Do you only want ‘nice’ words from the Lord?
Are you offended easily?
When opposition comes from your own peers, friends and family will you hold on the Lord?
How do you dignify an attack on yourself?
How does the Lord reveal things to you?

Keep Jeremiah open, let God continue to speak through Him to you, only 40 chapters to go!

Decisions!

What do I do?
Where shall I go?
How will it work out?
If I do this what are the consequences?
Will I still be in control with this decision?
Will this cost me?
What? Where? Why? When? How?

JEREMIAH 10
Facing a looming exile into Babylon Jeremiah prays, “it is not for man to direct his steps,” v23.

Are you making a decision today? You may be facing insurmountable challenges. His prayer encourages us to trust God to make the way clear for us to overcome these challenges.
Thomas Merton, priest and theologian, wrote what became known as “the Merton Prayer”. Pray this prayer today.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

“I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.”
So said the world’s most famous boxer, Muhammad Ali.

It was an outrageous boast.
But we are familiar with such.
We live in a world of big is better, more is greater, louder, larger, so many powerful words are used to describe how we are the best. Come to us. We reach out, we give, we make things happen, we are, we are all that you need.
I speak of the Church.

JEREMIAH 9

Are you wise? Do people come to you for problem-solving? Don’t talk about it.
Are you strong? Do people marvel at your ability to get through tough times? Don’t talk about it.
Are you rich? Do people love your testimony of how God has blessed you with the ability to make money? Don’t talk about it.
Talk about this: God.
Talk about knowing Him.
Talk about how He loves and treats people.
Gossip Him. Speak of yourself less. He is far more interesting than all of us put together!
v23-24.

CHINA IN TEARS

JEREMIAH 8
You who are my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me, v18.

One of the most popular bars in the Chinese city of Nanjing has only a sofa, a few tables, and tissues—, a lot of tissues. A recent World news report highlighted the city’s first “cry bar,” where customers can sit and cry for £3 per hour and it is growing in popularity. Owner Luo Jun says he opened the bar when clients of his last business said they often wanted to cry but didn’t know when or where it would be appropriate to do so.
The world has gone bonkers!

You may be stifling a cry or actually find yourself able to shout it out loud.
The Comforter is here!

Back in china, God’s people are truly in sorrow…

“Church members, lawyers and Christians visiting the family of detained Protestant Pastor Zhang Shaojie were beaten, harassed and detained by “hired thugs”, police and government agencies on 23 and 24 December 2013.
On 23 December, Pastor Cao Nan of Shenzhen, who had travelled to Nanle in Henan province to conduct a service to pray for and rally support for Pastor Zhang’s case, was dragged from his car by local police, who beat him. He was then taken to a police station where he had pepper spray sprayed into his eyes.” CSW.

How do they wipe their tears when their heart is faint?
The Comforter is here!

He is here for you!