Jeremiah

God just wants us to be real with him… He made man for genuine relationship w/ him

This year has been something else… I am so thankful for the opportunity that I have had to just delve into God’s word and pull truth after truth after truth out of it. The hardest part is that I feel like I am drinking from a fire hose… having so many different things that I am learning without the time enough to really meditate on it. In the midst of all this the thing I fear the most is that I would be working so hard to be excellent and getting God’s word that I would lose sight of the fact that what I have with Yahweh through Jesus’ blood is relationship. In Jeremiah I see a man who was able to just be real with God about his emotions… who had no fear to glorify God with his actions and no hesitation to simply be real with all of his emotions. My flesh would lead me to be a perfectionist and the sad reality of this is that I often feel like I have to be perfectly happy and content with all that comes up in my life. I often wonder if there is something wrong with me in how I lament so often with God. I see in my flesh this feeling of discontentment and “woe is me” attitude. While I don’t see God being pleased with that I do see that God wants us to wrestle through things with him, for he is patient to love us through the things we don’t understand. This blesses me… because I surely don’t understand a lot of things… and all I want is to have the freedom to be understood and to just be… well… me. God is cool with this and it blesses my heart to see the reality that God just wants relationship with me. I see in Jeremiah’s laments and even in the book of Lamentations that God wants to be a part of man’s life and can deal with the mess. He says that he alone can heal… and that is why I am so thankful for Christ’s blood. I need healing… big time… all the time. I needed salvation and he has given it freely by his blood. In the Christology passage in Colossians 1.20, paraphrasing Eugene Peterson here… “all of the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe are restored into vibrant harmonies through the blood of Christ poured out on the cross”. This to me shows that God is in the business of restoration and I need it. I don’t know how to get there without just being honest with my Maker… my Savior. Jesus says that we are friends of God through his blood in John 15.15-16… and I am honest with my friends… living in open and real relationships with them.

I don’t know how to really apply this other than just continuing to walk in relationship with God. I have come to appreciate so much just the quiet times that I have with my living Savior. I now see in Jeremiah a man who was intimate with his Maker and I am thankful that Christ is here with me every moment… walking in relationship with me.