See, I will bring them from the land of the north
    and gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the lame,
    expectant mothers and women in labor;
    a great throng will return.
 They will come with weeping;
    they will pray as I bring them back. (Jeremiah 31:8-9a)

These verses were originally written to the Jewish people who had been taken into exile. These ancient Jews were promised they would return to their homeland, and they did. But it was only a temporary relief. For they would be scattered again.

The text applies to Christians too, because the Hebrew Bible has many sneak previews of Christ and Christianity. Before we believed, we too were in exile…we were not living in the spiritual homeland God intended for us. We needed rescue by Jesus, the King of the Jews, because we were enemies of God and separated from God.

Many of the returnees in the Jeremiah verses above had serious physical challenges. It seems easier for them in their weakness to see their need for God. Yet, without Jesus Christ, even the most fit people are, in a real sense, “blind and lame.” They may think they are strong and self-sufficient, telling God “I don’t need help, thanks.”

I do have a warning for you today: You might not be as powerful and self-sufficient as you think you are. Consider what happened to King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel. He had been warned by a prophecy against being self-sufficient — but his failure to respond brought consequences:

Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:29-30)

Because of that arrogance, he lost his sanity and “was driven from men and did eat grass as ox” (Daniel 4:33) [i]

Finally, though, because of God’s mercy, Nebuchadnezzar was able to recover, leading to a huge change of heart:

 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble. (Daniel 4:37)

Do you feel rich and powerful? God requests you to acknowledge dependency on him. And lest you think I am claiming that I have it all together, I haven’t arrived. I know I always need a daily renewal of my own heart. So this post is for all of us.

Would you rather enjoy life to the fullest as you admit that God really is the King … or live on your own and go through what Nebuchadnezzar went through, wasting your time as if you were eating grass?

[i]Today this is a known psychological disorder.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boanthropy

I looked out my window at the snowy hillside on a bright windy early March day during the isolation of the COVID pandemic. Starting to read Psalm 90, I found this amazing request:

Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us,
for as many years as we have seen adversity. (Psalm 90:15 CSB)  

When we remember our own times of affliction and trouble, how do we react? Do our memories cause anxiety, annoyance and grief as they repeat endlessly?

Today’s opening verse reminds us that affliction is only temporary. Indeed, if I keep re-experiencing or re-feeling troublesome past things, then I am ripping myself off of God’s righteousness and peace. It’s helpful to think of the meaning of resentment: it means to re-feel something. So resentment is a re-play of past negative feelings.

I remember a time when I underwent a sharp and prolonged rebuke by a boss and I felt my face turning bright red and staying red. Yet today when I recall that incident, instead of re-feeling the humiliation, I view the job loss that followed as God’s way of bringing a key turning point in my life.  Sure, at the time it seemed sharp and unexpected — who likes being fired? But God used it in leading me to a new career and in setting the stage for exactly where he has me in life in 2021.

Seeing how God used that past humiliation to bring me into a new career reminds me that God has a way of turning adversity to joy.   

 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
    that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)  

I don’t claim that this joy-replacement is instant and 24 by 7. There are other humiliations I have had that God is still applying his restoring grace to! But even though I have not been instantly cured of the pull of old bad memories and experiences, I am glad that their grip is shrinking and that I can keep being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)

My wife and I live in northwest New Jersey where the water is extremely hard, so we need a water softener. We don’t want our pipes to get calcified.

But another kind of calcification is a much greater danger. We need to be on guard because we don’t want our hearts to get calcified.

The original warning about having a hard heart was to the Israelites who were whining and complaining in the wilderness on their way from Egypt to the promised land. Listening in, you would hear them say “This journey is taking too long! The food is lousy!”

Centuries later, God renewed the exact same warning for Christians in the New Testament — because they still needed it. And two thousand years after that, we still need it!

So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice,
 do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
    during the time of testing in the wilderness (Hebrews 3:7-8)

Thankfully, when we are threatened with hardness of heart, God provides heart softeners. Let’s look at one key softener today: The value of encouragement.

 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:12-13)

Our water softener has periodic cycles of recharging and regeneration. Otherwise it loses all its effectiveness. Just so with us. We might think we can do really well on our own, but we need our own recharging from mutual encouragement.  And this encouragement is needed daily to avoid getting hardened.

Almost all the wanderers in the wilderness were so hard-hearted that they did not make it to the promised land. But today, as we encourage each other, we trust that we can arrive at God’s destination for us: To be complete in Christ.