Rediscovery is both refreshing...and frustrating.

Do you ever just stop and reread journal entry's? I'm assuming those of us who keep journals, even if chaotically sporadic like me, do go back and read them, I mean what's the point if you don't, right? Well, lately I've been feeling a bit off-kilter in my walk and some of my problem is the typical "I'm too busy" crap...which really is crap if you think about it, I mean why is it that our devotional time is often the first thing we cut when we get "busy"? Really, Jonathan, is there not one other thing in your "busy" day that can be cut for 15 minutes at least so that you can maintain at least a small amount of face time with your father? And I get mental images of SNL news anchors Amy Pohler and whats his name going, "Really? Really?.....Really?!"

Sooo, I was reading today in an online version of "My Utmost for His Highest" devotional (www.myutmost.org) and was in a round-a-bout way brought back to what I claim is my favorite scripture, Jeremiah 12:5,

"If you have raced with men on foot
And they have worn you out,
How can you compete with horses?
And if you stumble in a safe land,
how can you manage the thickets by the Jordan?"

And the weight of why this is my favorite scripture started to convict and challenge me again...and the refreshment of God's filled my chest, it truly is alive and is life to us who believe, isn't it? Wow. But still, in reference to the title of this entry, it frustrated me in that here I was having to go back and relearn, rediscover something that God had already taught me...I thank God for his patience with me, but sometimes I feel bad for His having to put up with me:) It's like, "Alright, son, let's go back and look at this again...there, now do you remember?"

"If you have raced with men on foot and the have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?"

To put this in context for all you hermeneuticly correct theologians, the chapter before Jeremiah was whining about all the bad stuff that he was going through to God, and this was Gods response to him.
This statement seems so, ummm, crazy? The idea that men racing with men on foot and being tired is not an odd thing, however how can a man ever compete with a horse? See, sometimes we get so caught up in what WE can do in our own strength that we forget the power of our God. It's like we start running and "doing", always doing, doing. Doing stuff that we think we can do when Daddy God has called us to do more, and then we get weary, or "burned out" because we're trying to do all this stuff with our own strength and all the while we are still just competing with men.
In this statement there seems to be an understood emphasis on the competing with horses, as if God was saying to Jeremiah, "I EXPECT you to compete with horses, and you're not." Say wha?! A man competing with horses on foot...talk about crazy...in OUR own strength. See, that is where the challenge comes in, how much do we trust God to complete what He has called us to do? To bring forth the visions HE placed in us? Do we really think that WE could possibly fulfill HIS vision? Really? We act like it, don't we?

"...how can you compete with horses?"

There's the challenge, because we can't and God knows we can't...in our own strength. Here's a secret, anything we do in our own natural strength will fade away in the natural...eventually. Anything we do in God supersedes the natural and lasts forever, and God has a long-term vision...the longest term, as in forever. So if you feel something in your core that seems absolutely impossible to accomplish without God, don't be discouraged...compete with the horses...

"If you stumble in a safe land, how can you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?"

Another way of looking at this is the flooding of the Jordan. If we stumble and can't walk straight spiritually when everything is rosy and we're surrounded by support groups and going to a great church, how the heck are we gonna manage the floods of life, and when the "thickets" grow up around us so thick that you can't maneuver through them? This is just an extension of the previous challenge that God put to Jeremiah while he was whining.

God's will does not always come with greased tracks and no resistance, often it's exactly opposite of that, we don't just see that in our lives but we can read it in the Word...great achievement always came with great sacrifice.

I was working out the other day and was thinking about how annoying it is that I have to constantly be in the gym to not only grow in strength but also to just maintain what strength I had gained, I cannot achieve a level physically and then just stop excercising and working out, if I did I'd lose all my gains! Which led me to realize that the cessation of resistance leads to the cessation of strength. This is sooo true of our spiritual walk as well, we cannot just get to a place where we feel comfortable and then stop striving for more and expect to just stay there, no, we will begin regressing if we did that.

So, this is the challenge, compete with horses. Lately this has been my refrain in my head when feeling weary, "compete with the horses, Jon." Because I know that I cannot do that on my own, and therefore when I do I get no glory, but God gets all of it. If we achieve things in our own strength we can claim the glory for it, but when we strive through God and achieve things that we could not have in and of ourselves then there is no glory for us but only for Him.

So I extend this challenge to you, compete with the horses. Don't be afraid of them, don't be intimidated by them, and most of all remember your God who strengthens you.

His,

jon.g.