Trying to get your attention...

Do find yourself constantly doing the same bad thing over and over again? Does it really matter to you that you are in this pattern? Do you know that is wrong yet you continue to do it? Have you suffered mighty consequences yet continue to go back to the well? If so you would not be alone.

Jeremiah 44 tells us how God's people continued to worship other gods despite the fact that they were told that the reason Jerusalem had been conquered was because they had refused to follow the One True God. Their actions were not the result of ignorance rather they were the direct result of absolute defiance and blinded logic. The evidence for this is found in verse 17 when the people attempt to make the argument to Jeremiah that when the gave sacrifices to the queen of heaven then life was good and when they stopped life was bad. The people had failed to see how bad it had gotten for them even when they were worshiping other gods. They had forgotten how wonderful life was in the Kingdom when they did worship the Lord. They also refused to see how those choices were causing them problems in the present. Essentially what they were doing was looking back at the good old days and trying to recreate those times.

We are quilty of this many times in churches. We look back into the history of a church and see how great things were back then. We take this 'knowledge" and attempt to replicate it. When we look back however we tend to not look at how our choices have negatively impacted our church. We usually only see the short term gains and not the long term losses. We must always be vigilant to not allow ourselves to get caught up in this trap and remember that there are consequences to our choices and that there really is no such thing as the good old days. Each era has it issues and problems. We must alwaso remember that people and cultures change and that just because something has worked in the past does not mean it will ever work again. We must always be on the look out for those new ideas, strategies and thoughts that will allow us to be better prepared to reach our current generation. To do this affectively we must not only allow but encourage the youngest among us to become leaders. We must be looking to them for ideas, visions and solutions for the problems we face today.