Based on reading 66 LL on Lamentations, I have to ask myself these questions this Sunday of my life:
Is the Holy Spirit speaking through my conscience? Is my mind focusing more on where I am wrong than where I am scared? Is my mind focusing more on the evil in my own heart than the fear in my stomach?
"Every moment of suffering represents a strident but merciful call to repent. And every moment of suffering presents a painful opportunity to hope."
Look at how the prophet responded to suffering. When all that he had hoped from Me was gone, a different, truer hope was aroused when he called my character to mind, when he returned to his right mind." Lamentations 3:17-18, 21.
"Something good happens in suffering that cannot happen in pleasure." 66 LL. "You fall into a ditch of deceit and deny that there are desires in your heart that the good things of life can never staisfy. You do not recognize the ugliness in your soul, the arrogant passion that leads you to judge others more harsly than yourself."
"You foolishly believe the wrong-minded and proud idea that you should be able to define what is good and bad for you and then live, with My cooperation, to gain the good and avoid the bad. Suffering lifts your denial of both desire and arrogance and opens your eyes to see that you are lying helpless in a ditch of your own making. When every good thing in life is either removed or exposed as unsatisfying, you discover your craving for the best thing in life, relationship with Me...on My terms. And you recognize your inexcusable and hideous arrogance that thinks I exist to give you what you believe is good, a proud arrogance that assumes you have the wisdom needed to discern what is good for your soul and what is lethal."
"Do not live to arrange for your own satisfaction. Confess the evil of your arrogance. Repent of your self-provision. Trust Me, in every moment of suffering."
Lamentations 3 Let's take a good look at the way we're living and reorder our lives under God. Let's lift our hearts and hands at one and the same time, praying to God in heaven: "We've been contrary and willful ... Lamentations 3:41.
Lamentations 4 Oh. Oh. Oh. Destroyed in a flash. God held nothing back from some kind people too. May be kind but are we holy? Lamentations 4:22 He'll punish your evil life and put all your sins on display.
Lamentations 5 All the joy gone from our hearts. Would that we had never sinned. Why dump us and leave us.
May we all take a good look at the way we are living and reorder our lives under God. Am I defining what is good and bad for my life and living to gain the good and avoid the bad?
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