Embracing God's Truth: Love, Discipline, and Transformation

But the delusions of the false prophets, that's the word Jeremiah uses, they're following the delusions of their own minds. This is how they really wish it was. They turn out to be pretty popular when the false prophets are giving the people the word that they really wanted to hear anyway. But the Lord says, what has straw in common with wheat? In verse 28. At first glance, straw might look like wheat, but it can't nourish you. It can't keep you alive like wheat can. You need, desperately, you need the real deal. [00:33:45] (34 seconds)  #StrawVsWheatTruth

Jeremiah 23, verse 29, the next verse, it says that the word of the Lord is like fire, like fire to burn away impurities. And then it says, like a hammer that can break rocks into pieces. The word of the Lord is capable of purging out the impure things that we are clinging on to. And the word of the Lord is capable of smashing the false ideas and pretenses and idols that we find very comfortable. But they're not real. They're not true. [00:34:33] (29 seconds)  #HardWordsFromLove

If you ever run across a hard word in Scripture, sometimes a hard word is just a word like I have no idea what this means, but sometimes a hard word is a word that really does challenge or condemn something in me, in my attitudes, in my behaviors. If you run across a word like that that challenges, that condemns, that's just trying to smash something that you're trying to hold together because you like it, and God's saying, no, when we encounter that hard word, we need to wrestle with it. When that happens, we need to pay attention, and we need to pay attention remembering that we are so often, like the little children, about to put our hand on the burner. We don't understand, but our Heavenly Father does. [00:36:10] (39 seconds)  #DisciplineForGrowth

Romans 8, 28, many of you probably know this verse, says, All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purposes. And if you read to the next verse, Romans 8, 29, it tells us what that purpose is, that we should be conformed to the image of his Son, that we should be like Jesus, that we should be sanctified. That's his purpose. [00:38:10] (25 seconds)  #PartakersOfDivine

God wants us to share in the vast ocean of love that is his holiness. And he will even use the hard things in our lives to help us grow toward that, to help us be open to that, to help us actually have the motivation to, as it says in verse 14, to pursue that, that holiness. [00:38:35] (23 seconds)  #UnitedInGrace

And what Lewis is trying to say and what I think these passages are trying to say is that God's plans for us are so much bigger than we can imagine. God's final purpose for us, the great masterpiece he wants to make of each one of us is so much more glorious than we even have words to articulate and we can settle for so much less. But he won't. God's plans for you are bigger and he is going to work on you until you reflect his plan. That's God's aim and he's got the tools. [00:44:51] (31 seconds)  #RunLookingToJesus

And I was thinking about this this week as I was thinking about Jeremiah. What would it be like to be the sword? I mean, how would it feel from the sword's point of view? If the sword could talk, what would it say? It would probably be hollering complaints, right? Why are you burning me? Why are you beating me with this hammer? Why are you breaking little pieces of me off? What are you doing, man? Because he can't see. He's not the master. But the smith is making the sword strong, capable, bright, even beautiful if he's a very skilled smith. [00:45:56] (34 seconds)

There's a great scene in The Lord of the Rings where, if you've seen the movies, you know what I'm talking about, where this ancient broken sword of kings is being reforged by the elven blacksmith and it's in the fire and they're working it with the hammer and it's this beautiful moment. And this sword is going to be given to the king. He's going to carry it into battle against the forces of darkness and evil in a bid to save his realm and rescue his people. And I think, man, if the sword knew that that was what was going on, that that was the plan, maybe that might change the way it felt about the fire and the hammer. Maybe that might change the way it felt about the pain of the present moment. [00:46:30] (44 seconds)

``God wants you to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and all his glory and all his beauty and all his dazzling brightness. That is his plan for your life. And becoming like Jesus, becoming sanctified means, always it means, submitting to a cross every time. And it is really only from Jesus that we can find the strength to do that. [00:47:14] (29 seconds)

When we hear a hard word, when we go through a hard season, sometimes I think the temptation can just be to throw up our hands in frustration. Some people, I think, even give up on God altogether. But if we keep looking to Jesus, who endured so much, the scripture says, for the joy set before him. He shows us, he's blazed this trail, he has run this path already. He shows us where it leads and he will take us there if we look to him with faith. If we follow him, he will bring us through the hard stuff now into the joy that was set before him. That's where he'll take us we will follow. [00:48:05] (44 seconds)