being secure

I’m reading in Jeremiah right now. This is pretty sobering. I just finished reading in chapter 20 in which Jeremiah is complaining to God about the state of things. “Curse the day I was born?” Wow, who would say that? I guess Jeremiah would.  I would have to be having an incredibly awful day to ever say or even think that! (So far I have not had one of those days!) The thing that is interesteing is what caught my attention in a passage just a few chapters over from the “curse the day I was born” rant. It is something that the Lord says about Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah: “I warned you when you felt secure, but you said, ‘I will not listen!’ This has been your way from your youth; you have not obeyed me.” (Jeremiah 22:21) I guess the part that really gets my attention is when Jehoiakim was “warned when he was secure.” It makes me think about how often we can “feel” so secure and failure, sin, or turmoil is right around the corner. I hope and pray that God can get my attention even when I feel so secure. It reminds me of the pride that comes directly before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18) So I want to be sensitive to the Spirit within that warns me of impending troubles. But for me to do that I have to allow the Spirit within the room to work and grow me into the person that God desires for me to be. And that my friend is a life long process. I do not ever want to get to a place in which I feel secure or comfortable about life and how I handle it. I want to be like Paul in which he says, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12) For me, that is being secure…pursuing a life of growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.