Letting God be Lord
Jeremiah 10: Mere mortals can’t run their own lives.
Years ago there was a TV commercial in which a stressed homemaker rudely said to her well-meaning mother, “Mother please, I’d rather do it myself.” According to the ad, she needed to take a pill, and not just any pill: their pill. However, her desire to “do it herself” could never be fixed by her taking a pill. It’s a part of the human condition. Specifically, it’s what we say to our Creator. We’re made to live in fellowship with the Lord, to be partners with him in his purposes in our world. Instead, we turn our backs on God, insisting “I’d rather do it myself.” The result is, well, it’s what I see on the evening news every day. Pain and suffering, hating and killing: it’s all the result of our doing it ourselves. The fact is that as long as we make the most basic of mistakes: the exclusion of God from our lives, everything else is just putting band aids on life-threatening wounds. On the largest scale, the only hope of humanity is surrender to God. On the personal scale, it’s the same. Jeremiah says, “Men and women don’t have what it takes to take charge of life.” His solution is to do what God designed us to do in the first place: connect to God and let him be Lord of all that we are.
Take Away: We’re designed to live in fellowship with the Lord and nothing else will do.