Ever had "one of those days"?

[Peace-=Of-God=-]

  Ever had "one of those days"? Well, if so, you're in good company, as I was just reminded by reading in Jeremiah 19-21.

  Jeremiah was doing God's will, preaching and prophesying in the Temple, warning the people of Judah that they were disobeying God and would be carried off into captivity in Babylon if they did not repent. The high priest, Pashhur, didn't like Jeremiah's message, so he had him arrested, whipped, and imprisoned in stocks at the Temple gate overnight.

  After Jeremiah was released, he delivered a strong indictment from the Lord against Pashhur and his family, and then apparently went off by himself and poured out his discouragement in a poem to God:

  O Lord, You misled me,
      and I allowed myself to be misled.
   You are stronger than I am,
      and You overpowered me.
   Now I am mocked every day;
      everyone laughs at me.
  When I speak, the words burst out.
      “Violence and destruction!” I shout.
   So these messages from the Lord
      have made me a household joke.
  But if I say I’ll never mention the Lord
      or speak in His Name,
   His Word burns in my heart like a fire.
      It’s like a fire in my bones!
   I am worn out trying to hold it in!
      I can’t do it!
  I have heard the many rumors about me.
      They call me “The Man Who Lives in Terror.”
   They threaten, “If you say anything, we will report it.”
      Even my old friends are watching me,
      waiting for a fatal slip.
   “He will trap himself,” they say,
      “and then we will get our revenge on him.”

  But the Lord stands beside me like a great warrior.
      Before Him my persecutors will stumble.
      They cannot defeat me.
   They will fail and be thoroughly humiliated.
      Their dishonor will never be forgotten.
  O Lord of Heaven’s Armies,
   You test those who are righteous,
      and You examine the deepest thoughts and secrets.
   Let me see Your vengeance against them,
      for I have committed my cause to You.
  Sing to the Lord!
      Praise the Lord!
   For though I was poor and needy,
      He rescued me from my oppressors.

  Yet I curse the day I was born!
      May no one celebrate the day of my birth.
  I curse the messenger who told my father,
      “Good news—you have a son!”
  Let him be destroyed like the cities of old
      that the Lord overthrew without mercy.
   Terrify him all day long with battle shouts,
     because he did not kill me at birth.
   Oh, that I had died in my mother’s womb,
      that her body had been my grave!
  Why was I ever born?
      My entire life has been filled
      with trouble, sorrow, and shame.

  From the sequencing of this poem (first verse: "life stinks"; second verse: "praise God anyway"; third verse: "life stinks"), it's easy to see the illustration of praising God even when the circumstances of life that surround us make us wish we'd never been born. Or, as Mark Hall and Bernie Herms so eloquently wrote in a more recent poem, "I'll praise You in this storm, and I will lift my hands, for You are Who You are no matter where I am, and every tear I've cried, You hold in Your hand; and though my heart is torn, I will praise You in this storm!"

  To me, however, the most beautiful part of this is that there's no record of God being hurt or offended or angered by Jeremiah's tirade ... rather, He lets Jeremiah vent all the disillusionment and depression that are weighing so heavily on his heart. And when he finishes, God doesn't respond by criticizing Jeremiah or saying "How dare you talk to Me like that?!" or striking him dead on the spot -- He just says, "Okay, I've got some more work for you to do, son, so let's get at it together" ... and then they do it!

  You see, God is not afraid of our feelings ... He wants us to tell Him how we really feel, because He already knows it anyway ... it's not like we can hide it from Him. We covered this topic a couple of months ago at TNBS, with the sermon series on prayer ... we saw that in the life of Job, how at the beginning of his trials, he was "playing nice-nice" with God -- "Oh well, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord" -- but God didn't reveal Himself in the situation until Job finally dropped his pious front of "saying the 'right' things" and really poured out his heart to God about the situation. In the same way, we need to stop "playing nice-nice with God" and start being honest with Him about how we feel about what we're going through in life ... only then can we truly experience the real relationship with Him that He intended for us to have all along.

[{CS}Col.Knight (David)]

yep, I had one of those days about 2 weeks ago.

I broke the computer and couldn't play AA, and then I totaled my car an hour later. it really helps to know that Jeremiah probably felt the same way.

The first couple of days I was depressed (life stinks), then I praised God and thanked him for bringing helping me through this storm (Praise God anyway), and then I was depressed again (life stinks). Funny how God lets that happen. I have no doubt that He allows us to vent our anger and our sadness so that he can work us towards HIS ultimate plan for himself and our lives.

[rebel]

I have had mulitple days like that But this has helped me in getting over them quickly

-Hawk-

[Monk-=Of-God=- (Denny)]

Yah, I hear ya Hawk. I don't have days, I have months, months of bad, months of good, but one thing that I have come to discover through these trials is that the promise that all things work together for them that love the Lord, is very true. We don't always see the whole picture at first. For example, when I first moved out of my house to live in Denver, CO, I didn't get a job for quite a while, and then when I did finally, I kept it for 3 months and then was forced to quit, and didn't really enjoy that work, and it seemed at that point that I wouldn't make it. Then I got another job, which suited me better and paid more, and I survived, for another 3 months, but then was fired from that job. At that point, I was extremely discouraged. Afterwords, through some friends, I got another job, and it paid twice as much and suited me perfectly for the entire 2 years I was there. I have come to realize, that if it wasn't for the first two previous jobs and the timing of those two jobs, I would not have gotten that third job.

At one point, I recall pretty much rejecting the Lord for a time, and let Him know that I didn't like what was going on at all, but it was after that, that a peace grew in my heart and I let the Lord direct me more and more after getting that weight off my chest.

Anyhow, thanks for bringing that to my attention Jeff! That is awesome!!