what God treasures

Something quite devastating and just heartbreaking has happened within my extended family today back in the States, and as I turned tonight to His Word for comfort and family, I found more to think about and a promise I could sleep on.

O. Chambers pointed me to Jeremiah 2, and said this: "Does everything in my life fill His heart with gladness, or do I constantly complain because things don't seem to be going my way?  A person who has forgotten what God treasures will not be filled with joy."

As I flipped to Jeremiah, thinking first, "What does God treasure?", I found chapter 2 to be scrawled with notes and underlines, but as I began to read, don't remember having ever read the chapter before.

It speaks rather boldly of Judah's apostasy, or abandonment, falling away, from God.  Listen to the passion in "Thus says the Lord", His heartbreak over the abandonment of his people and think, as I am, of the passion we once had for our God that has perhaps grown dull.

Thus says the Lord,

I remember the devotion of your youth,

the love of your betrothals,

Your following after Me in the wilderness,

Through a land not sown.

Israel was holy to the Lord,

The first of His harvest

So, what injustice did your fathers find in Me,

That they went far from Me

and walked after emptiness and became empty?

They did not say, "Where is the Lord

Who brought us out of Egypt, 

Who led us through wilderness, 

Through a land of deserts and pits

of drought and of deep darkness,

Led us through a land that no one crossed,

where NO man dwelt?

Even the priests did not say, "Where is the Lord?

Has a nation changed gods?

But My people have changed their glory 

for that which does not profit.

Be appalled, O heavens, at this

And shudder, desolate.

For My people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken Me,

The fountain of living waters,

And have made for themselves cisterns,

broken cisterns,

that can hold no water.

You might see a dozen different things here, but tonight, in the face of brokenness and shuddering, He speaks to me loud and clear like this...

1) He made us each, all of us, as ones dear to Himself.  Dear to Him.  Holy for Him.  With great love and great possibility, by His Grace.  By His love.

--Do I believe, do I realize, have I accepted, have I embraced, that I AM HIS HOLY ONE, dear, and set apart?  To be entirely different, as He is entirely different?  Bold and confident and found and defined fully and beautifully in Him?

2) We become what we search for.  When we walk after emptiness, we become empty.  When we walk after His love, we become it.  When we follow after Christ, He is in us.  When we search and invest only in ourselves, ourselves we find. 

--What am I walking after?  These days, right now, these steps I'm taking, even now...what are they pursuing?  Because I am becoming it... 

3) When we cannot find Him, we must ask for Him: "Where is the Lord?  The one who brought me out of slavery?  Who led me through complete wilderness?  Who has been beside me through places no other man could even stand to accompany, through all the deserts and pits and deep darknesses of my life?  Where is the Lord!?"  

When we cannot find Him, we cannot, not even for JUST the circumstance, "change gods" or rely on ourselves or others.  We must ASK for Him...for. He. will. be. found.

--What am I filling the empty, the hurt, the disappointed, the frustrated, the hungry WITH?  Am I stuffing frivolity and other "gods" in places He's not clearly popping up as I would like?  Or am I asking Him, "God, where are you?" and faithfully WAITING for Him to be found?

4) Anything but Living Water is brokenness and vain efforts. I see in the eyes of women desolate on the streets, of men still wandering in their wilderness, of children walking after emptiness--a complete and utter drought.  Completely parched and dulled and defeated by life.  

And there, here, He is, The Fountain of Living Waters.  Forsaken, and then replaced.  By broken things, that can't even hold water, much less produce it.  

--What broken cups am I about mending in my life? What springs of living water am I overlooking, what selfish desires and empty pursuits am I settling for?  In my reliance upon myself and others, have I forsaken my First Love?  

What does He treasure?  Am I after it?

"Faithless sons, declares the Lord, return." Jer.3:14, 29:13: "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you."