A NEVER-ENDING LOVE STORY”
Jeremiah 1:4-10; 31:1-6
When a high pressure system dives down from the Artic bringing cold temperatures with it, collides with a low pressure system bearing lots of moisture it’s picked up from the Gulf of Mexico, the New England states don’t just get a blizzard. They get what they’ve gotten twice this year, the dreaded Nor’Easter.
As we saw earlier in January, as well as in the last 48 hours, the snowfall along the Atlantic seaboard and inland into
One couple got hopelessly lost trying to get to their country home during a Nor’Easter. Peering through the blinding snow, the wife cried out, “I see a chicken, honey. Maybe it’s from a nearby farm where we can get help.” “That’s not a chicken,” sweetheart. “It’s the rooster that’s on top of the weathervane of Pastor O”Reilley’s church!”
Sometimes the snow is deep.
And sometimes, it gets really deep.
Do you know why a lot of people were unable to make it to worship today in churches from the
It’s because they’re buried, some buried so deep that only the weathervane is sticking up above the surface of the snow.
In like fashion, do you know why so many people come short of breaking through into greater fellowship with God, greater joy in God, greater praise of God, and greater obedience to God?
It’s because they’re buried.
Some as we saw in January, are buried under the weight of unforgiveness or sin or disobedience. Their breakthrough comes in coming under God’s will, forgiving those who have sinned against them, offended them, or hurt them.
Others of us are buried under a different weight, one which also must be lifted spiritually from us so that we can breakthrough into greater fellowship with God, greater joy in God, greater praise of God, and greater obedience to God.
This weight is the weight of feeling that we are unworthy - unworthy of God’s love, God’s grace, and/or God’s salvation. It’s the weight of believing that we are unlovable – for how could God ever love me knowing what I’ve done and said in my life. It’s the weight of being convinced that we are unsalvageable – God’s grace may be able to save others, but I’m hopeless.
This is a terrible weight. It can bury a person spiritually deeper than the highest rooster on top of the highest weathervane on top of the highest church steeple. And when we are honest with ourselves, most of us can say that at one time or another we’ve all worn one or all of those “I feel unworthy, unlovable, and unsalvageable T-Shirts.”
This is the month of Valentine’s Day, so named for the brave bishop of
Breakthroughs come because love comes, and in coming, people come to find out that they are worthy of God’s love and central in His “Never-Ending Love Story” with the people He has created in His image. From His own mouth, spoken through the mouth of His prophet Jeremiah, the Lord God who has created us tells us: “I have loved you with an everlasting love….” (Jeremiah 31:3.)
We - as unworthy, unlovable, and unsalvageable as we may feel – are the central focus of this never-ending love story and the central focus, therefore, of God’s love and grace. By grabbing a hold of this fact, that we are loved with an everlasting love, we have the power to breakthrough and plow through the deepest drifts that have buried us under the belief that we are unworthy, unlovable, and certainly unsalvageable.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
We are worthy of God’s love and he freely gives it to us so that we can have our breakthroughs into greater joy and blessing in Him because He not only formed us in the womb, God also knew us previous to that moment. Therefore our relationship with God and His love for us predates our birth.
Do you know what the following things have in common:
my children…..
my house…..
and this piece of pottery I brought with me today?
They all have in common the fact that I had a hand in creating them. I helped to “birth” them, so to speak. And because I had such personal “investment” in their creation, I have a special fondness of them, affection for them, a protection of them, and a bond with them….unlike any other children, house, or piece of pottery.
The “everlasting love” that God loves us with and which is what this “Never-Ending Love Story” is all about that gives us breakthrough power, is everlasting and never-ending for this important reason – God Almighty had a hand in creating you. You are HIS design. You are HIS handiwork. You are HIS masterpiece….whether you feel like it or not, believe it or not, you are still HIS greatest treasure, second only to His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
God Almighty, author of the whole universe, not only formed you in your mother’s womb, fashioning you and sculpting you with a intricacy and balance that defies human understanding. In Jeremiah, it is revealed that God takes this intimacy back even farther in saying that somehow, someway, He knew you and me even before that sperm and egg got together on the dance floor inside your mother’s womb and you began to be fashioned and formed into the one and only you that has ever been and ever will be.
If you can grab hold of this truth, that God’s love for you and knowledge of you actually predates the conception that began you, then you’ll have the foundation for every breakthrough that you will ever need. When Nor’Easter’s come and try to bury you under the feeling that somehow you are unworthy or unlovable or unsalvageable, this word from God through Jeremiah is your breakthrough power. God appoints this power to us, this breakthrough power, so that we will have the power of God in us “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. .) If this is not breakthrough language, I don’t know what is.
This is the power of love in you, given by your Creator who knew you before He formed you, and has consecrated you and appointed you to take His word of salvation to the nations. We are not to get buried under the feeling of worthlessness, like God indicated when He said through Jeremiah: “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”
See that word “deliver?”
It is the Hebrew word natsal and it means “to snatch away.”
This is breakthrough language. God will pluck you out, snatch you away, lift you up, and pull you through any Nor’Easter that attempts to bury you under the weight of unworthiness or any sense of feeling unlovable or unsalvageable because His love for you predates your formation. It was there before you were here.
But God delivers us, snatches us away, and gives us the breakthrough so that we can continue on with the mission of telling others that breakthrough is possible for them because before they were created, God knew them too. And He consecrated and appointed them too. They just haven’t heard the message. They’re still buried, and we’ve been appointed as God’s breakthrough ambassadors.
Go and dig somebody out!
Jeremiah 31:1-6
Because God loves us with a never-ending love, one that began before our birth, He continues to be faithful every day in giving the blessings and power we need tin order to breakthrough to greater and greater fellowship with Him.
There was a boy back in the late 1800’s who worked long hours in a factory in his hometown of
Determined to dig her son out from underneath this avalanche of negativity, his mother made every sacrifice she could to get him voice lessons…with a different teacher. Her confidence in her son, her faithfulness, her sacrifice paid off, because when this boy became a man, the whole world was blessed in the dawning decade of the twentieth century with the operatic voice of Enrico Caruso.
Caruso’s mother had a never-ending love for her son, which birthed something else - a never-ending faithfulness that would help him to breakthrough and become the singer that was locked inside that ten-year-old body that was buried by the criticism of his first voice teacher.
When I was led to Jeremiah 31 because of the phrase, “an everlasting love,” I was struck by its direct connection to the second half of the sentence, “therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” And that was followed by some of the greatest “breakthrough” language I have ever read in the Bible: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin
God’s faithfulness to hang in there with us and dig us out like Enrico Caruso’s mother did for him, is due to the fact that His love for us is a never-ending, everlasting love. It’s not going to go away. God’s destiny for us is not to slowly suffocate beneath the Nor’Easter’s of negativity that come when we feel unworthy, unlovable, and unsalvageable. His destiny for us is tambourine banding, merrymaking dances, the joy and productivity of vineyards, and building up on the mountain of blessing and not in the valley of the shadows.
You are a part of God’s “Never-Ending Love Story,” begun by Him before He even formed you in the womb. It is that love He has for you that creates His faithfulness to you, so that you will have the power to breakthrough and, in breaking through, become the ambassador He has appointed you to be.
