25 Jul How did we get here? Jeremiah 1:5: Gods prophetic calling to wake up a dying nation.

God had a plan for your life before your natural conception. Before your Mother and Father were ever introduced, God had already ordained a path for your life. You are not a mistake. You did not make it here by accident. You did not make it her by chance. God knew you and put you here, before you were even conceived.

I’ve battled the bulk of my life with self-esteem and poor self-image issues. Ever since I was a kid. I was never good enough, smart enough, handsome enough, or sure enough. But the Bible says he knew me before I was conceived.

He knew me before he formed me in the womb. He sanctified me, before I was born. With all my insecurities, and trust me, I have a slew of other faults as well. He placed me here anyway.

God does not look at what we are, instead he focuses on what you will become. If God chose people based on what they were, then David would have never been king.  Saul fit the part well as king.  Not David.  King Saul was not only handsome, but he was also very Tall and brawn.  

God’s calling is a hard thing to grasp because the people he chooses are not the people we would choose.  Let’s be honest.  You wouldn’t’ choose you!  You would have chosen someone who’s better than you.  We never look for those like us, we always look to exalt those who are better than us.  Mic drop.  Yeah I know I’m preaching something over here.  Thank God.

It’s a hard thing to grasp and a hard thing to understand, because I’m not seeing what he sees. I see unworthiness, he see’s justified. I see brokenness, he see’s compassion. I see weakness, he see’s strength. I see a battered self-esteem, he’s see’s humility.

When God looks at you, he doesn’t see what you are, he sees the faith in you. What you will become you. He sees in you all the things you can be, will be, but are yet to see in yourself. This is how he gets the glory. By taking a lump of coal, and turning it into a diamond.

You are not a mistake. You may have made some in your life, but your life and existence is not a mistake. The World would not be a better place without you. Not if you allow God to do the work in you that called for you before he formed you in the womb.

Some of us, our lives are so stagnant that the things we use to get us out of the bed each day are not even real. Jesus wants us to live our lives with expectancy. But disappointment and failure has robbed us of expecting anything.

Including myself. I’ve fallen into this trap. Do you know how hard it is to get up after being knocked down by a circumstance that you didn’t see coming? You know how hard it is the first time that happens to you?  There is a saying in boxing that if you see the punch coming, you can prepare for it and adjust your body to take the shot.  But the punch you don’t see coming is the one that’s dangerous and usually results in a knock down or a knockout.

Some of you have been knocked down 50 times.  A hundred times.  Even a thousand   times.Your legs are gone (boxing terminology).  In Bible talk your hopes have faded.  You still get up, but you’re not really expecting anything worthwhile to happen in your life because you’ve been knocked down so many times. 

Each setback chips away more and more at your self esteem, at your patience, and at your faith.

It’s easy to say to someone “get back up tomorrow’s another day”. It’s easy to say Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble“. It’s easy to say these things to others when you’re not the one going through them.  Sometimes we just need to sit in silence for 7 days like Job friends did initially, because most of us don’t have the answers to address the circumstances.

God is an ever present help when we’re in trouble, but what if God is the source of that trouble?

What if God is the one who put you there to be “troubled”. Who is your refuge then? There are some of us who are in places God has put us in. We keep calling to him, but he ain’t answering. Joseph sat in prison unjustly. He probably prayed to God every night, especially because he didn’t do what he was accused of.

And every night Joseph sat in that prison. An innocent man. Some of you are innocent, and the predicament and circumstance that you find yourself in is not your fault. You didn’t do anything to be put there.

The truth is when we pray to God for certain things, God says yes, but he never tells us the cost to receive it. I purchased a house after many years of renting an apartment. I spoke to several homeowners about the pros and cons of owning a home.

Most talk so glowingly about home ownership. Just like we tend to do about marriage and having kids. They never really go into the cons as much as they do the pros. Owning a home is hard work. You can’t call a maintenance man, because you don’t have one. You’re the maintenance man. And if you want someone to be your maintenance man, you’re going to have to pay them.

You’re the maintenance man, the plumber, the landscaper, the gardener, the cook, the maid, the painter, the HVAC person, you basically become a Swiss army knife of responsibilities around the house.

You will spend many weekends doing maintenance, housekeeping, and upgrades. Something will always need fixing or replacing. It will never have you bored. Welcome to home ownership. These are all the cons that come with the pros everyone focuses on all the time.

When we ask God for something, we only see the benefit, never the cost. The things we want and desire in life come with a cost. Are you willing to pay the cost to get what it is you desire? If it’s a good thing and it’s in God’s will, he has certainly signed off on it, but it’s going to cost you something.

Think about all the things you’ve asked God for repeatedly in your life. Were you expecting God to give it to you without much effort? Be honest. Did you expect God to just bring it to past if you just sat back and practiced patience?

You want a Husband or a Wife that’s perfect for you, meanwhile you’re not perfect for them because you’re not making the changes in your life God is looking for you to make. God is always looking for us to change something. Will never get to a place where we don’t have an issue that needs to be conquered.

How can we. We’re imperfect. Stuck in a sinner’s body. Some of us are in circumstances that feel like prison, because none of our efforts are getting us out of the situation. We pray, we try, we pray some more, but the circumstances remain. How can this be? 

Maybe you aren’t stuck.  Maybe you’re not trapped.  You may be exactly where God wants you to be at this point in time.

God heard every prayer Joseph sent up from being locked in that Egyptian prison. He knew Joseph’s brother’s treated Joseph unfairly. Their evil decision broke their Father’s heart. They regretted it. But couldn’t gather up the courage or the nerve to tell their Father Jacob what they had done.

If you are in a place where you are praying and using all of your efforts to get out of that place to no avail, then it is not God’s desire to deliver you at that moment. God does not have an algorithm in which he does things. There is no pattern or sequence to decipher.

Anyone telling you they know the mind of God and the ways of God is a false teacher! And a speaker of lies!

If God knew you before he formed you in the womb, then he knew your circumstances as well before you arrived in them. He knew your predicament. He foreknew your struggles and your challenges. He already saw them, which means he’s already made a way around them or a way through them.

Our birth from God’s perspective, is on a reverse timeline. He has seen our ending from the very beginning. We can have faith in this one truth alone. That God cannot be surprised or caught off guard by our circumstances nor our decisions.

Do not hold yourself to the standards that the world created. The world’s standards are temporal. They only last a season. Beauty, Power, Riches, Adoration, Fame, Influence, these things can be taken away at the blink of an eye. The person who holds these things loses them at death.

But the standards that God has set us too are eternal and cannot be stripped away, and they are obtained at death and held forever. I’m not ignorant to the fact that we have a physical body that must be nurtured.

I will never preach about the eternal, and pretend that is all you need to live with joy in this life. That is not truthful. We need adequate food and nourishment. We need physical interaction, verbal interaction, emotional connectivity, etc.

There are so many things here that are good. Family is good. Fellowship with other believers is good. Service to the body of Christ is good. Marriage and intimacy are good. Charity and giving is good. Uplifting and exhorting one another is good. Telling someone you love them is good.

Being loved is good. Being held accountable spiritually is good. You cannot live your life in a vacuum of the Bible only. We are made of flesh and spirit, and they both must be nurtured, and they must be nurtured properly.

A passion for sex is not wrong when used in it’s proper circumstance. It is a natural desire that God put inside of all human beings. Satan has taken what is natural and perverted it to be used in unnatural ways.

Our natural passions and functions have been distorted and persuaded to be used in ways God has not designed. And these ways have now been merged into society, creating societal norms that are anything but normal to the Kingdom of God.

But our citizenship resides in the Kingdom. We are currently in a climate where they are discussing almost daily the issue of immigration and illegal aliens coming to the country. Even Christians have joined in on this discussion, with various opinions of here or there.

But how can an alien discuss properly on the subject matter of another alien? John 15:19 Jesus is clear on newfound residency: “If you were of the world, the world would love its own”. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you”.

So as the alien is not wanted by those who reside in the country, would I not be able to understand the alien’s plight now more than my country men’s? But I see Christians lining themselves up with governments to attack the defenseless, when we are indeed hated by all governments, as it was the sins of the world that killed Christ.

Did God call us to create a comfortable place amongst our enemies and form alliances with them that is only possible through compromised spirit? No! God has called you and formed you in the womb not to allegiance with the world, but unto separation because the world has rejected him.

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you“. Jesus declares some of us will be hated by the world depending on the nature of your calling. The world loves the one who is doing the work of giving to the poor, but they hate the one who is giving correction and judgement. He is despised for his work.

He is persecuted, ripped to shreds, placed in shackles and his life is threatened or lost. Jesus is not trying to scare us, he is trying to prepare us for what’s to come to many of us. This is what the cost of truth is. This is the truth that we were called to proclaim.

If you feel like the world is on your shoulders, that everything and everyone has lined up against you, the stranger as well as the familiar as well as the Family, and you carry the truth of God in your mouth, it is the truth that they decided to line up against.

It is the truth that they hate. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. You cannot speak for God and be friends with the world. One hates the other, and in order to fit in one you must behave contrary to the other. Jesus commanded us not to conform to the world.

It’s because many of you don’t, that you find yourself in lonely places. When you are separated by God’s orders you are being sanctified. He is removing what needs to be removed, adding what needs to be replaced, and sharpening that which is dull.

Your experiences will not be in vain, because God has already seen them and devised a plan to use them. You’re not worthless.

I hope God touched someone’s heart with this message. I hope God uplifted someone today with this message. Share this message with anyone you love who may be going through a difficult time. Just like Joseph, he hasn’t forgotten them, he’s just doing something right now that you don’t understand.

He hasn’t abandoned you. He’s heard every prayer, seen every tear, and he’s working some things out in you and in your heart as he does during these times. In those prison years is where God shaped Joseph.

While David was on the run from King Saul, God was shaping David into the Godly King he would become. While Moses was away for 40 years, God was preparing him into the Man he needed to be in order to deliver the people of Israel.

God wants you. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have formed you. If you have anything in you, give God praise just for knowing that much. I know it’s hard when you’ve been beaten up and beating down, but Christ didn’t give up on the way to the cross, and neither should you!

When you wanna give up, tell God “I’m thirsty”. I’m thirsty from carrying this cross. Take a break if you need one. Then continue to Calvary, because Jesus is waiting on you there….

I will be doing a follow up on this message titled “The Cost of discipleship”. It is only fitting to go right into that while in the book of Jeremiah. Be well and God Bless you.