Image by Melissa Clayton
Lamentations 4:12-22 Luke 5:4 2Corinthians 3:17
We are not too different from God’s people in the Old Testament. They believed in Him and His providence, but they always struggled with breaking their covenants. They agreed to make God their only god, but they would forget or get angry and seek out idols. They suffered immensely and were often at the mercy of other nations.
God sent prophets and made new covenants with them, yet they always struggled with the same thing not trusting God. Like I said, we’re not that different. In America we may believe we are free, and for all intents and purposes, perhaps we are. However, being “free” in the legal sense does not mean that we are not slaves in other capacities. How free are we from consumerism? From racism?
From eating disorders? From anxiety and depression? From cancer? From obesity? From violence?
Do we place our hope of freedom from these things in God? Or do we place it in nations, things, governments, people?
“Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help; in our watching we watched for a nation which
could not save.” (Lamentations 4:17)
God’s people were watching vainly for a nation which could not save them! After multiple chapters admitting wrongdoing and rebelliousness, sin and emptiness, the person in Lamentations finally just comes out and tells it like it is: they were waiting to be saved by someone/something that could never do it. They turned away from God because they were seeking His salvation apart from Him.
When we do this, we only experience suffering and emptiness. We will never find peace and happiness apart from Christ because he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. True freedom is found in the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17). This trust is hard though because it is entirely out of our comfort zones.
We are trusting Someone we can’t always see, hear, feel, touch. We are not in control.But we must learn to trust God beyond the borders of our comfort, the borders of our homes, the borders of our nation. Let’s put out into the deep (Luke 5:4), take a step out onto the water (Matthew 14:29), and seek salvation in the only One who can make us truly happy.
And now pray with this. Listen to the end:
