August 13 - Jeremiah 4-6: Plowing my Unplowed Heart

My background and baggage contain condemnation and guilt.  Built over time by a works-based upbringing.  Piled on by the false accusations of people intending harm, not good.  Fed by my first-born personality striving to never disappoint, never displease.  Not pretty.  I fight it mentally and emotionally and spiritually... a lot.

Because of this self-condemnation, I'm finding myself resisting Jeremiah's Message from God:

Yes, circumcise your lives for God's sake.  Plow your unplowed hearts... (4:3)

It's wearying to me.  I know I'm bad.  I know I've done wrong.  I know I can't measure up.  Circumcision and plowing feel like gouging at wounds that are barely healed.  Is this really what God is asking of me?

"...holy love tears down before it builds up."  (66LL)

That's very different than condemnation.  I think I've confused my self-condemnation with Holy Spirit conviction.  It's not the same.  The intentions and results are vastly distant.  Through my condemnation, I'm focusing on myself and throwing my pity-party.  Through conviction, God is calling me to keep my eyes on Him.

"Without an ongoing consciousness of sin, any sense of nearness to Me is counterfeit.  But with consciousness of sin, the fire of purifying holiness will sustain your faith in My goodness, your hope of a better day, and your love for Me and for this God-forsaking world." (66LL)

 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved.  Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.  A new power is in operation.  The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

...In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.  The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it.  And now that the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. (Romans 8:1-4)

Father, You are tearing down more rubble of my life.  Sometimes I just want to say, "Enough!"  because I'm tired of the destruction and disruption.  Help me to enter into Your plowing, Your conviction,Your building, Your deep healing, Your Spirit in me.