George Mueller once said, “It is true that the faith which I am able to exercise is God’s own gift. He alone supports it, and He alone can increase it. Moment by moment, I depend on Him. If I were left to myself, my faith would utterly fail.”
I came to live by that quote throughout this summer. Since it was my first summer as the Director at South Mountain Baptist Camp, I quickly learned how to fully depend on God instead of relying on my own abilities. This summer was one of the most challenging summers I have ever experienced, but God was faithful to see me through. Now that camp is over, I have had a couple of days to sit back and reflect on our first summer. Today, let me encourage you from the book of Lamentations about God’s faithfulness and may you reflect on His faithfulness in your life today.
The book of Lamentations contains a whole series of laments concerning the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The prophet Jeremiah writes this book in the aftermath of all the incredible sorrow and loss.
So what do you do when you are faced with uncertainty, sorrow and loss in your life? How do you keep from sinking down under the weight of it all? How do you find the hope to carry on? After all, we have all been there at least once in our life. Let me share two truths that we can learn from Jeremiah’s experience.
The first truth is…
I. DWELLING ON YOUR SORROW WILL ONLY INCREASE YOUR SORROW. (19-21)
Now, this does not mean that you should not express your sorrow. It is good to express our sorrow anytime we have loss in our life. In fact, in these verse we find Jeremiah remembering all the sorrows that Israel had recently expressed. And the more he dwells on those sorrows, the more sorrowful he became. Jeremiah was known as the “weeping prophet” and throughout the book of Lamentations he expressed his sorrow during a time of great loss. We can also read the Psalms and find examples of King David pouring out his hurt, frustrations and disappointments before the Lord in prayer. So, it is good and right to express your sorrow, but we must be careful not to dwell on our sorrow. If we’re not careful, that can be a easy slope to fall down. Something goes wrong in our life and instead of dwelling on God’s faithfulness or goodness, we automatically begin to wallow in our pity and sorrow. I’ll be honest, that is a place I have been before and it’s not a place that I would ever want to go back to.
Jeremiah shows us that dwelling on your sorrow will only increase your sorrow.
In verse 19, Jeremiah’s remembering all his troubles, all of his hardship and his straying from the Lord. His memories are poisoning him like a bitter root. When we dwell on our sorrow, we are letting it poison our life with resentment and bitterness. In verse 21, we see that when we dwell on our sorrows it cannot bring hope, only despair and fear. Jeremiah recognizes this when he says, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” He chooses to remember God’s faithfulness!
The second truth is…
II. CHOOSING TO REMEMBER GOD’S FAITHFULNESS WILL BRING YOU HOPE. (22-27)
We find in verse 23 the climax of the whole book of Lamentations, “Great is your faithfulness.” God is not only faithful; His faithfulness is great! His faithfulness is perfect, infinite, overflowing, far beyond our human faithfulness.
Charles Spurgeon once said, “The glory of God’s faithfulness is that no sin of ours has ever made Him unfaithful.”
God is faithful! His compassion never fails and they new every morning! God’s mercies are fresh and new every morning. Are you thankful for that today? Every new morning is a sign of God’s faithfulness and grace.
Since March 1st, my first official day as the director at South Mountain, I have learned three things from Jeremiah and I would like to pass them on to you:
- Learn to trust God’s Character – God is good through and through.
- Learn to trust God’s timing – God’s timing is perfect, He is never early, and He is never late, always on time. I have had a difficult time in accepting this truth at times in my life. But God reminded me of this while we were waiting for the road to be finished “on time”. The problem was, I was wanting it to be on my time instead of trusting in God’s faithfulness and perfect timing. Because I was wanting it done on my time, that created moments of stress and anxiety. I realized that I can trust Him enough with my eternity, but not enough in the here and now.
Maybe you’ve been there, or that’s where you are today. Let me encourage you to let go and give it to God. Learn to trust God’s timing instead of yours.
- Learn to trust God’s discipline – In verse 27, we learn that God uses the difficult times in life for good to make you stronger in Him. Too many times we think of discipline as a punishment for sin, when in fact, it is God strengthening your character and teaching you to trust Him through the hard times in life.
Coffee Conversations 