Journey to Awareness: Day 3

Today’s passage is Jeremiah 22:13-17. After confronting people who purpose their lives around building the biggest and best materialistic life they can build, God challenges us in verse 15, asking “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him.”

In a world full of extremes, this is a very important concept. On one hand we have people who are impoverished and don’t know where their next meal will come from, or if they’ll even have a next meal. On the other we have those who are so concerned with keeping up with the Jones' that they have three cars in the garage, 4 surround systems for each TV in their home, and they already have the iPhone 5 on pre-order.

Recently, a friend had to depend on several people for transportation after she was involved in a car accident. She kept describing the many ways this experience tested her humility.

Everyone struggles with humility. Either we can’t seem to humble ourselves enough to follow God, or we think that we’re plenty humble to carry us through. Words of advice: when we find ourselves bragging about how humble we are, we may need to pray about how humble we’re not being.

There is a bit of danger in finding a balance in humility. One may think they are being humble by allowing themselves to depend on others, but that’s not quite what God is after. We have to be careful not to fall into the habit of always expecting others to take care of us. We should expect for God to take care of us, and His provision may often be through other people, but we should never fall into the trap of allowing our minds to shift to that of wanting others to provide for us.

Similarly, we shouldn’t be so guarded that we refuse help from others. God created community for us to lean on each other and for us to serve Him through each other.



Don’t forget to check out the Application section, as well as the Reflect and Respond parts of your journals for today.