His thoughts towards us... Looking at Jeremiah 29

It's probably one of the most popular Old Testament passages of Scripture. You see it on posters, cards, notebooks, bookmarks, plaques... But as I've been reading through Jeremiah, it's really made me rethink what God's promises in chapter 29 actually mean and signify.

Firstly, in the run-up to chapter 29, there are a number of chapters which document Jeremiah's struggle to be heard as a true prophet, and the prominence of false prophets amongst God's people at that time. It was a turbulent political time; Nebuchadnezzar had already carried off certain articles from the temple and members of the royal family along with others to be exiles. The false prophets were giving the people left in Judah false assurances, like Hananiah, who breaks the yoke Jeremiah had made as a visual image and declares that God says he will 'break the yoke of the king of Babylon' (28.4). But God tells Jeremiah that He has 'put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon' (28.14). The impossible unthinkable circumstances that God's people were in - where their land and their identity were under threat - was actually being engineered by God Himself to punish them for their unfaithfulness to Him. Jeremiah's message, that they should submit to exile and not rebel, and seek the peace of the pagan land of Babylon (29.7), was not what the people wanted to hear. They wanted deliverance from Babylon, not a deliverance that featured 70 years of captivity.

And yet, even the fact that they were going into captivity with a promise of deliverance was incredible grace from God to them. As Jeremiah writes in Lamentations, 'Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.' (3:22-23). All God's people deserved was annihilation by foreign powers; they didn't deserve even to be exiled. In this light, the letter which God tells Jeremiah to write to the captives in chapter 29 is full of hope and promise: 'Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit.' (29.5) Exile was not meant to crush them but to give them an opportunity to seek the Lord again.

'For thus says the LORD: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me, and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.' (29.10-13)

Although there was little positive reception to Jeremiah's words at the time (see verses 27-32, which show Shemaiah's objection to the letter and God's judgement upon him), godly men like Daniel would take Jeremiah's words very seriously and use them as a spur to seek the Lord as the seventy years drew to a close (see Daniel 9). This is such an encouragement, that the Word of the Lord has power and truth. Even if the majority don't see or accept it, there will be a godly remnant who do.

I don't think we can take verse 11 out of chapter 29 and use it as some kind of promise to anyone that God has plans for their good, as a kind of lucky charm, because the rest of Jeremiah and indeed the letter itself in chapter 29 is about obedience to the Lord. Only if we have true respect for God and honour Him in our lives can promises like these ones of hope apply to us. It's also worth remembering that in the New Testament, the 'living hope' that writers such as Peter refer to (see 1 Peter 1:3) is first and foremost a hope of resurrection, a heavenly inheritance, rather than earthly prosperity. Jeremiah has a compelling message for us today, and if we relegate our study of this book to a few verses pulled out of context and put onto a kitchen wall plaque, we do this to our detriment. I am loving the freshness of this book, and I'm seeing more and more how the different chapters tie together, even though they are not always in chronological order and mix up oracles and messages with narrative story about Jeremiah's life. Praise God for the depth and breadth of His Word, and for its power.

'Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?' (Jer 23:29)

On 'just doing something' - risk-taking faith for the kingdom of God

Reading 'Nevertheless', John Kirkby's story of how he started CAP (Christians Against Poverty), an amazing charity that offers free debt counselling and has helped many many people get debt-free and also come to faith in Christ, has massively encouraged me with just its main message of perseverance despite circumstances. John had personal debt, he was in danger of his own home being repossessed, and the charity had few sources of income. He had several discouraging letters from Christians who said they wouldn't support CAP, that the fact the charity was struggling for money meant that they were doing something wrong, and John should seriously rethink what he was doing. Yet looking at the international work that CAP are doing now, and the huge numbers of those who have come to faith through their work, and it is clear that John was totally right to hold on to his belief that this was what God had called him to do.

There is undoubtedly scepticism regarding the notion of a 'call' in many Christian circles today. Instead of looking for specific guidance, many would advocate using the Bible to discern if something is sinful (in which case, don't do it), commanded (in which case, do it), and if it is neither, then use wisdom and try it, and if it's not right, the door will shut. I have to confess I am one of the first to get uncomfortable when people start talking about 'prophecies' and 'words' they have, which have directly impacted their decisions. And yet, when we were praying about moving to Garndiffaith, God did clearly confirm it was the right decision through Scripture for us. Since being here, nothing has really turned out as we expected -- in fact I'm not even sure what our expectations were to begin with anyway-- and yet we know this is the right place to be. If we were judging things on human results and circumstances, we'd have probably put our house on the market again and tried to jump ship!

The key illustration in the book for me is on p57:

'A seed which receives no water will only survive if it sends its root deep underground trying to find the water. The eventual tree that results is strong and fully able to use the rains when they come. God needs to ensure that we will be able to manage what he has for us.'

There are times when, from a human perspective, things don't make sense. They don't look good. It seems as if you are banging your head against a brick wall. But the fact is, God often brings His people to those kind of places in order to grow a deeper trust and faith in His power and provision. Just thinking through the heroes of faith in Scripture: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua... The list goes on! They all went through times of great testing, times where nothing was happening, times where they had nothing else to do except hold on to the promise God had made them. What would it have been like building the ark before the rains came? What about believing that God would give you a son when you were a hundred years old? And how about the burden of leading a people who were continually rebellious, ungrateful and critical of everything you did?

The way God works is not the way we work. He often allows things to happen that we would not, if we were the ones in control. He does let things get bad sometimes, from the uncomfortable to the heart-rending, grief stricken circumstances you just want to get out of as soon as you can. I worry sometimes that the rationalisation of the Christian life (to 'just do something') has eroded the very meaning of faith and what it means to live expecting God to speak and lead your life, even when He takes you into unexpected and not-very-nice places.

The danger is, that if we leave everything up to 'wisdom', then we will never take risks for the kingdom. We can all too easily find excuses why we shouldn't give up our job / move to that estate / give that money away / get more involved with that difficult person... I know my own propensity to kid myself that I am making a decision for the 'right' reasons when actually I'm just justifying staying in a more comfortable situation.

The stuff which inspires me in John Kirkby's story is the same which inspires me about the lives of the great pioneers, missionaries and preachers of the past (Muller, Whitefield, Taylor etc), and ultimately which I see in the men and women of faith in the Old and New Testament. They don't look at their circumstances and then draw their conclusions: this mission has failed, God is not with us, I should give up and go home. No! They look at their God, and they say, "we don't know exactly what's happening, we don't know when things will change, but we know You and we believe and trust that You are good and what You do is right. We will obey You in what You've called us to do." That's the kind of faith I want.

Walking through grief

'But I know
That the silence
Has brought me to His voice'
(Selah, 'I will carry you')

I've been reading the book of Jeremiah, and what's really striking me is the way that this prophet faithfully witnessed for forty years when virtually no one listened, and went through the catastrophic events of the fall of Jerusalem. He walked through a long time of great sorrow. He wept for the state of his nation and his people. They were rebellious, yet he identified with them. He did not distance himself and shut off his emotions, even though that would have been easier, because he shared God's heart for His broken and faithless people.

Grief and sorrow are hard to bear. Recently I lost my nan, and last July I had a miscarriage. These two experiences of grief have been really different for me, but in both situations I have found it hard to grieve. I have not found myself to be particularly articulate about it, or to understand it, or to find much of anything tangible in it. That's why the lyric I quoted about silence for me really sums up the whole experience. Through miscarriage particularly, I felt a heavy silence. I had no words to talk about it and few to pray about it, but I did hear His voice in certain ways through that time, reassuring me of His presence even though I did not always feel that He was close by.

This verse really struck me today:

'Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in all the earth."' Jeremiah 9:23-24

Grief decisively breaks through all of my so-called wisdom and all of my supposed strength. My riches -possessions, accomplishments- mean nothing when faced with death. But as I am stripped bare and faced with my own inadequacy, I am compelled towards God's sufficiency and grace. He is 'the LORD'. I know that my suffering is not meaningless, because He is a God of 'love, justice, and righteousness'. He doesn't always stop the path from being dark, but He gives me assurance that there will be light at the end.

The most valuable aspect of grief, for me, is that it rocks my world and fractures me away from thinking this is my home and my resting place. It reminds me, with a harsh jolt, that life is full of pain because we have been dislocated from our God through sin. And I get a tiny glimpse of the grief the Father's heart endures when He sees His children suffering through their own rebellion, and ultimately the suffering Christ had to endure to redeem us from this state of dislocation. I think generally, I am way too focused on the here and now. Most of my grief for my miscarried baby centred around the fact that I was never going to be able to do all the things I expected I was going to be able to do: experience a full term pregnancy, give birth to a healthy child, take the baby home, and so on into the future. That's a legitimate reason for grief. But the hope of the New Testament is in the new creation that Christ will bring when He returns, the world put right again, where suffering and death are no more and He wipes every tear from our eyes. My grief made me long for that new creation in a way that I probably should be longing for it all the time; I just don't think about it enough. I get too distracted in the busy-ness of everyday life. Grief forces me to stop.

The story behind Selah's song 'I will carry you' is movingly recorded in an interview with Angie Smith, available on Revive our Hearts.com. Her baby Audrey Caroline had abnormalities with her kidneys and heart, and only lived for 2.5 hours after she was born. When I come across stories like this, part of me shrinks away and doesn't want to hear about it. I'd rather lose myself in a novel or watching a romantic comedy. But Jeremiah has challenged me: is this a godly response to the suffering that is all around us in this broken world? No, it isn't. If we're ever going to get a glimpse of God's heart, it's going to be in sharing these stories of brokenness with the rock-solid hope of Christ, as Angie testifies.

Angie calls for women to break the silence and share their experiences of miscarriage and losing a baby, because too many women out there suffer in silence. Walking through grief is often lonely, and there are times when it just has to be you and God. But reaching out to others, sharing your grief and sorrow, is a necessary part of the healing process and why God has placed us in the loving community that is the Church. We are urged to 'Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn' (Romans 12:15), which beautifully and succinctly sums up the paradox of life in Christ here on earth. We have a bittersweet mix of joy and sadness in our lives, but we know that ultimately, our sadness is temporal; our joy is eternal.

'For his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.' Ps 30:5