It Takes Time

“I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.  He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not unto light.  Surely against me is He turn; He turneth His hand against me all the day.  My flesh and my skin hath He made old; He hath broken my bones.”  Lamentations 3:1-4

Did you ever pray for something very fervently, yet no answer seems to come?  Do you ever feel that all of your effort to do good and live by God’s word seems to not have a positive effect upon situations that surround you and others? What about taking a step forward, but then falling two steps behind?  This is how the prophet Jeremiah felt.  He was an eyewitness to the power of God’s wrath brought down upon His own people because of their egregious sin against Him.  Proverbs 13:24 tells us that a parent who “spares the rod hates his son”, that is, a parent who neglects to discipline his or her child rears a child who can become a terror to society, and thus end up a failure in life, a person to avoid, lost without Christ, and without meaning or purpose in life.  I remember years ago I heard a co-worker say that she and her husband loved their son too much to discipline him.  That was before I had children, but I had enough common sense to know that was a huge mistake.

A parent who truly loves his or her child will discipline, correct, and sometimes punish a disobedient child because the parent desires the best for the child.  The best can’t be found in an undisciplined life.  If God had not cared about His people, He could have let them go on in their idolatry which would have caused them to eventually succumb to an eternal death of misery and shame.  He could have then started over with a new nation of people like He threatened to do after the people had worshiped a golden calf while Moses was meeting with God on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 32:7-14).  However, Moses begged Him to forgive the people, and He did, but 3,000 died because of their sin.  Jeremiah was likely aware of Moses’ dealing with God’s rebellious people, but this time God’s wrath had been much more severe and far-reaching unlike any time before in Israel’s history.

Anyone with a normal sense of right and wrong would rather live in the light of what is good and fair rather than in the darkness of evil, injustice, and lies.  I am sure that Jeremiah would have preferred to live a life serving the LORD, sharing His love with all his fellow men and women, going about doing good and living on the mountaintop rather than in a valley of darkness surrounded by evil, sin, despair, persecution, and emptiness, but it was the latter in which he found himself as an obedient prophet of God.  I suppose Jeremiah wondered why God chose him to deliver a message of dire warnings to the people of Judah.  He had likely been attempting to live a life pleasing unto the LORD when God called him to the work of prophecy concerning Judah’s rebellion against God.  Jeremiah was obedient.  He did everything that God asked of him.  God knew that he would do the task set before him.  It was a tremendous responsibility, but not one that anyone would desire.

However, Jeremiah sometimes felt as if this calling was some sort of punishment, that God had turned against him in choosing him for this difficult assignment.  Jeremiah felt like he had aged way beyond his years.  His prophetic mission had taken its toll on his body.  God had forbidden him to marry and have children (Jeremiah 16:2).  His was a lonely life.  He had spent likely half or over half of his life doing a work which brought him persecution by his peers, sadness for the state of his fellow Judeans, and disappointment that they refused to heed the words that the LORD spoke through him.  He did what God told him, yet he saw no positive results.

While my situation and the situations with which most folks I know are dealing are not quite the same as Jeremiah’s situation, I think some of us can somewhat identify with how he felt.  Those of us who are concerned about the lack of godliness in our nation that was founded upon scripture and godly principles pray and pray and seek God’s intervention to at least slow the pace of wickedness down, but evil just seems to escalate across the land of the free and the home of the brave until at some point America will no longer be recognized as being shed upon by God’s grace, but rather covered with His judgment.  It certainly seems like that time is not too far away.  It is almost like watching the Titanic sink and knowing there is nothing that we can do to save her.  If America is to be rescued from the depths of darkness, it will only be by the power of God.  I am reminded of Abraham and his bargain with God to find 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, and at least 10 righteous people in Sodom (Genesis 18:26-32) so that God would not destroy the city.  The lack of righteous people and the presence of extreme evil caused God to rain fire and brimstone upon it.  My fear is that America has gone too far into depravity to turn back now.  We can’t give up praying, though.  The results that God has set forth will come, but it will take some time.