Pastor Wayne has been one of the greatest influences on my life to see myself as the Lord does.

Scripture
“Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. Jeremiah 1:6-8

Observation
Jeremiah launched his career in heady days. It was like 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and university idealists created a New Deal for America. It was like 1961 when John F. Kennedy became president and youth felt they could change the world. It was like 1981 when Ronald Regan became president and young Republicans felt they could upend 50 years of liberalism.

King Josiah was the fresh face in the palace in Jeremiah’s youth. As a 21 year old monarch he was just one year into a campaign to change the national religion back to the faith of Abraham. The reforming king set out to tear down every pagan altar in the land. Jeremiah was not just watching all of this on TV; he was on the picket line for change.

Like the assassination of JFK, within a few years King Josiah would be slain in a battle to save his nation. He was the only king to have died in war. Everyone could remember the spot where they stood when they heard the news that King Josiah was dead. But Jeremiah would live on to the end and beyond.

The prophet’s job was a tough one. He was called not just to speak a message that people did not want to hear, but also to say that even should their hearts change still their nation would be destroyed. The best that anyone could hope for was to escape with his or her life. No one wanted to hear the world was coming to an end, and even the good people cringed that nothing could stop it now.

But Jeremiah stood firm for decades. How?

First, he recognized that his greatest problem was not the hostile audience he had to speak to, but rather his own self-perception. Jeremiah saw himself as Jerry, the little boy. But God’s command to him was that he was in fact Jeremiah the man. He must never speak of himself as a child again.

Each of us struggles with our self-perception. Between Satan and life there are plenty of setbacks to think less of ourselves than we really are. But if we are going to be of any use to the Lord we must begin to see ourselves as he does. That starts by the conscious choice never to give ourselves a petty label again. For Jeremiah it was the command, never to speak of himself as a child again. He was in fact a stonewall that would not fall no matter how many times he was assailed.

Second, Jeremiah had to make the choice to not be afraid. It is of great comfort to know the most often repeated command in the Bible is the call to “fear not.” Fear can paralyze even God. Jesus himself could do no great miracles in his hometown because of their fear without faith. It is strange to think that a fearful person has control not to fear. But he must because God would not command us to do something we are unable to do. We can make the choice not to be afraid.

How? By holding onto the promise. Here it is: “I am with you and will rescue you.” No matter what predicament Jeremiah found himself in he would soon discover that he was immortal until his work was done. In fact Jeremiah outlived most of his critics.

No matter how fearful the circumstances a God-called person has the freedom to say, “The Lord is with me and somehow I am going to come out of this for the better.”

Application
Here I am 45 years old. I’ve been in ministry 25 years. Yet still my view of myself doesn’t always match the Lord’s. I’m doing much better, but I still have work to do. For Jeremiah this was a snap decision. Suddenly he was pushed into the world of men and had to make manly choices. If he could, I can. I choose this day to see myself as God does. For he is with me.

Prayer
Father, can you give me something better than a mirror? It’s your face. If I see you smiling then I know everything is going to be alright. So today I put my trust in you Lord. Today get me through to the other side.

Uncle Henry was the grandfather I never had (mine died before I was born). He called us his “synthetic granchildren”. He was a pastor of pastors and our family patriarch. He taught us all how to pray.

(More pictures below)

Scripture

The problem as God gave Habakkuk to see it: God, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen? Habakkuk 1:1 (The Message)

Observation

Often our prayers are full of answers but not enough questions. The answers I speak of are our notions of how God should fix our world. We see a problem, we think up a solution and we barge into the holy place and tell the Lord what he ought to do. There is another level of prayer that starts with questions and not answers. Instead of telling God what to do, it lays out an inquiry of the Lord and then waits for the answer.

Habakkuk asked God just three questions and had enough in God’s answers to write a book. That says that the Lord has more to say to us than we have to speak to him. We have two ears and one mouth to give us an idea of ratios of speaking vs listening that God is looking for.

Eugene Petersen translates this opening sentence with an unusual twist. “The problem as God gave Habakkuk to see it.” The word of the Lord was not just in the message that God gave to Habakkuk, it as also in the problem laid before him. Each problem of life is thus a gift and it is our choice to ask good questions that makes it possible for God to speak.

Mother Teresa was on a journey with some of the sisters. Along the way they faced a good many difficulties. The sisters wore out the mother superior with their constant fretting about problems. Finally Mother Teresa said, “Problems are a gift from God.” That little change of perspective changes a problem from an obstacle into an challenge to eventually draw from the miraculous resources of the Lord.

Problems are a gift from God and questions are how we find answers.

Prayer

Father, help me to be more diligent in asking your direction. Help be to be the Larry King in prayer, knowing to ask the right questions and then sitting back to see how you will answer. Amen.

Uncle Henry would host a campfire and marshmellows every summer in his backyard. Here’s me with my family when I was five. I’m the little blonde boy, kneeling.

Our birthdays were a week apart, so every Labor Day Weekend we would trek the three hours to Uncle Henry’s 150 year old house and celebrate our birthdays together.

Every one of us boys had an annual “talk” from Uncle Henry to improve our lives. I was not very attentive. I would give anything for one of those talks today.

Just to prove that there were times I would sit still when I had my little talk, here’s me after some bicycle accident.

Like a fallen tree now driftwood, there is a disarming beauty about our lives humbled before the Lord. I found this tree on the shores of Fraser Island. I would not want to be surfing while it was tossing in the swell!

Scripture
Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles, carved idols and cast images. In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the temple of the LORD his God.

While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the LORD, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the LORD that had been given through Moses. Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the LORD.” He gave it to Shaphan. Then Shaphan took the book to the king and reported to him: “Your officials are doing everything that has been committed to them. They have paid out the money that was in the temple of the LORD and have entrusted it to the supervisors and workers.” Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his robes.

Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says concerning the words you heard: Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD. 2 Chronicles 34:1-8; 14-19; 26-27

Observation
I put more of the Scripture reading today because this is an 18 year long segment of a leader’s life. It can’t be summarized in just a verse.

Just before Josiah got his two front teeth, he had become king at the tender age of eight. Of course he only played king while others ruled for him. Just 8 years later, in the middle of an outbreak of teenage acne, ripples of gossip chattered the royal court. The teenager was on a religious kick, reading dusty books, talking to toothless grandfathers, and praying to the God everyone in the land knew was as old fashioned as the robes from David’s day. Everyone agreed that though it was shocking the fad certainly would pass.

But it didn’t. Now sporting a fuzzy beard the athletic twentysomething king was in everyone’s eyes a religious fanatic. He was tearing down the most cherished shrines of the nation and doing a refurbishment of the old Temple building. The walls were stained with pigeon droppings, gold was peeling off of cedar panels, awnings were sagging, and decades of religious junk crowded every walkway and storeroom.

All the while God didn’t say a word. We have no record of how heaven felt while the boy turned teenager and then into a man. There’s not even a prophetic hint of how the Lord looked on the clouds of dust every time another pagan shrine was toppled. Heaven is silent until the Bible book was found, read and the king was on his face in torn clothes. During the days of his father, King Manasseh, Bible books disappeared. But one was hidden in the Temple for safekeeping, probably inside of a wall. When the money box was pried loose, out tumbled the real treasure. The book was probably Deuteronomy. Watered with the voice of Shaphan the secretary, the dusty words of Moses sprang to life. There was the word of God in plain speech about everyday life.

There is something about the Word of God when it comes alive and touches everyday life. The Holy Spirit leaps out of history into our modern world and shows us on one hand how little has changed with human beings while on the other how much must change for us to live lives pleasing to the Lord.

King Josiah tore his tailor-made suit to shreds. His crown rolled down the throne stairs and the royal nose was pressed onto the cold stone pavement. Wails not heard since the days of David ricocheted through the palace. And then, for the first time in 18 years of silence, God spoke.

This says something about the life that gets God’s attention. The 16-year-old seeking God was a start. The 20-year-old working hard for honorable ends was a good continuation. But it was the 26-year-old young man with his face on the ground, divested of his position in life, weeping in view of all he lead that brought God out into the open.

Isaiah, the prophet sawn in half while hiding in a hallow oak log by Josiah’s own father, summed it up just a few years before:

The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.” Isaiah 57:15

I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts, who tremble at my word. Isaiah 66:2

Josiah’s great-grandfather put it well:

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust—there may yet be hope. Lamentations 3:27-29

Application
There is nothing in my life that impresses God. My yearnings for him do not impress, my works for him do not turn his head. It is when I am disarmingly honest with my shortcomings that God responds to me. Isn’t it odd that we exert so much effort impressing others and pleasing the Lord, but that what he seeks most is what I don’t want others to know about me. It wasn’t a king in regal robes taking action that pleased the Lord. It was a man with a ripped shirt and an accessible heart who interested him most.

Prayer
Father, I’m sitting in Starbucks at the moment, so I don’t think it is appropriate that I rip my shirt. But know that in my heart I am on my knees. I’m in a phase of life where there is an allurement to impress others. But you simply want me face down with nothing to offer but frayed edges. Father, see me as I am and use me as only you can do. Amen.