What do we deem a good day? Does a good day go something like this? You wake up from a good night’s sleep. You read your Bible and you spend time in prayer with God. You clean up your room, you take a shower, and you eat a good breakfast and you go to class. You ace your quiz. You head over to lunch and you make everyone constantly laugh with all your jokes. You do well in a test later in the afternoon. You then head to work. At work you really impress your boss; he compliments you in front of everyone. You eat dinner. Change into some comfy clothes back in your dorm, do some homework, check Facebook and sports scores, prayer group, and then you go to bed.
I think we all can agree on that this day I just described was a good day. Now let’s look at real life. As we all know, days like that rarely happen. Bad things happen almost every day. The car needs repairs and it costs more money than you have at the moment. Your boss gets mad at you at work. The insurance company is stressing you out and you can’t get any peace because the credit card company is hounding you day and night.
Now does that sound more like reality? Sadly, it does. But what happens when the “big trials” come into our lives? Your car gets totaled. You go to the doctor and you come back finding out that something terrible is wrong and you will require surgery. A relative has died because of various means. A relationship that you thought was “the one” ends up not working out and you’re left crushed. You completely bomb the quiz or test that you spent hours on studying for. You have a college bill to pay and you have no money to pay it with. There could be any number of things that can we could classify as “big trials” and most of us know how we should respond. We know what the Bible says in regard to handling trials. We’re pretty good Christians. ---But if we know what to do, then why do we not respond the correct way when we seem overwhelmed by what life seems to throw at us? Because even though we know we should depend on God when we go through trials, we don’t. We believe we should, but a belief not practiced is not a belief at all.
Lamentations 3:21-24
"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning:
Great is They faithfulness
The LORD is my portion, saith my soul;
Therefore will I hope in Him."
Let’s look at the background and context of the passage. Lamentations is written by Jeremiah to mourn over the destruction of Jerusalem. But the physical part of seeing his city destroyed is not what ails him the most. It is the emotional aspect. Jeremiah says earlier in the chapter that he feels like his skin has turned old, that he has been torn into pieces, he was filled with bitterness, and that he felt like breaking his teeth. And then after the first 20 verses of describing his emotional anguish he concludes in verse 21, which is the pivotal verse in chapter 3, “This I recall to mind, therefore have I hope.” Wow. How many of us can go through emotional pain like that and then say they have hope? Isn’t it true that when we go through trials that affect us emotionally, that all we recall to mind is the pain and hurt and that God is somewhere else on the sidelines and not present in our time of trouble? But Jeremiah says he has hope. Why? Because he is meditating on two very important attributes of God: God’s mercy and God’s compassion.
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. . .” Let’s stop right there. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. A lot of time we give praise and thanksgiving to the Lord because we saw Him save us from harm: Some car almost hit us, a storm blew down a tree and it missed your house by inches. In sure there are several times in your life that you have seen the Lord protect you or loved ones and all the glory goes to God for those instances. These are all things that we physically see with our eyes. And by accounts like these we readily believe that it is of God’s mercies that we are protected. But what about the times when God protects us from harm and we don’t even realize it? Sometimes we learn about these times. Here is a story that illustrates God’s protection: Steve Scheibner is a pilot for American Airlines. After flying on a trip, pilots have to take a certain amount of days off before their next flight so that way they can be rested. September 10th, Steve logged onto his computer and checked for available flights. He saw one open. Flight 11 from Boston to Las Angles. He went ahead and reserved the flight for himself and then waited for confirmation that the flight had been given to him. Right before he went to bed, he checked online and saw that a pilot with higher rank than he had, had booted him off and taken the flight from Steve. Steve was ok with that, which meant he was getting paid for having the next day off. The next morning is 9/11 and we all know what happened on 9/11. The flight, flight 11, which Steve was scheduled to fly on the day of September 11th, was the plane that was hijacked by terrorists and later crashed into the North Twin Tower. That puts a different spin on how we look at God protecting us. It humbles me that I don’t thank the Lord enough for the mercy that He gives me that I am aware of as well as the times that I don’t even realize it.
It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. Why?“. . . Because His compassions fail not.” With the way I was raised by my parents, I’ve never had any reason to believe that God could stop loving me, or stop forgiving me, or stop taking care of me, but as I counseled kids at The WILDS last summer, I noticed a scary trend in a lot of young teenager’s lives. A lot of them did not understand that God is so incomprehensible that we can’t “figure” God out. I know that sounds silly, but a lot of them do and even I did at one point in my life—They thought they had God figured out. I believe this is the same thing in a lot of our lives. We fool ourselves at times because since something bad happened or that we did something horrible, that God could never use us or that God could never forgive me for doing something so bad. But “His compassions fail not.” I can’t get over that every time that I stumble in my walk with the Lord, that He is more than willing to forgive me and then to help me back up. I don’t know about all of y’all, but if I were God, I would have gotten tired a long time ago with just myself, let alone the rest of our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is something we should never take for granted. We should never grow callused to this aspect of God.
His compassions are new every morning.—Now when I first read this passage, I thought it was kind of strange that Jeremiah said that God’s compassion and mercy are new every morning, because aren’t they supposed to be there every moment of the day? But the more I meditated on this passage, I started to understand the reason why Jeremiah said it the way he did. As humans, when we wake up in the morning, the first thoughts that pop into our mind is probably about our problems or our worries. We haven’t even gotten out of bed yet, but we are already meditating on our problems and we are not even dwelling on God’s promises! We need to realize that when we wake up in the morning and we are bombarded with thoughts of any kind, that God’s compassion and mercies are new EVERY morning. When we wake up, BOOM, His mercies are there. When we wake up, BOOM, His compassion is there.When we wake up, we should be thinking, wow, my Savior’s promises are new every morning.
Verse 23 concludes with, “Great is thy faithfulness.” God is so faithful. Hebrews 13:5 says,” For he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” When we are at our low, when we are in the hardest times-- that is when God grows us the most. We just need to pray for His mercy and compassion. Take it, if you will. Accept it from God and then DEPEND on Him for everything so that I can say as Jeremiah said in the next verse, “The Lord is my portion; therefore will I hope in Him.” The idea of this verse is very similar to Psalm 16:8, which says, “I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” Since the Lord is my portion, since I have set the Lord always before me, I will hope in Him, I shall not be moved.
So back to our big trial that is affecting our life. We know how we should respond to them, but we don’t respond the way we should. A belief not practiced is not a belief at all. We know we should depend on God. But we always meddle with the affairs of life instead of leaving it up to Him. We know God gives us mercy and compassion. But we are too busy thinking woe-is-me. At times like these—of big trials—we should be seeking the Lord—letting Him mold us in any way that He wants. We so frequently here the illustration of Christ is the molder and we are the clay. But here is another aspect of the same story. When a potter is making a pot, he will spend lengthy amounts of time molding and shaping his creation. If a small defect forms or a hole appears, the potter will often destroy the clay. Mash it back into what he started with in order to rebuild it to the perfect piece of clay that he is trying to create. Is that not what trials are? God “mashing” us down so to speak, so that He can rebuild us to be the piece He desires.
So the point of all this: How will you respond to trials? Will you respond like Jeremiah?
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