The Burning Inside Your Bones [Part 1]

Pastoral author and Bible teacher Alan Wright signed up for this one called this and suddenly the image comes to mind and he just blurted out, he says. I tell you what happened. I was by its Pastor Alan welcome to another message of good.

You will help you see your life in old I'm being excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series remain as presented with an old church in North Carolina that will stay with us throughout the entire program today. Mr. will make sure you know how to get our special resource right now you can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright so as you listen to the message go deeper as we send you today's special contact as a Pastor Alan.org that's Pastor Alan.R.

G or call 877-5448 60 anymore on all this later in the program but right now let's dig in and get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright this is really good will I is not so much about starting or stoking the fire as it is surrendering to a fire. We are in a new series called remade because that's the image God gave to Jeremiah Jeremiah 18 of a potter who is working at the wheel and discovers a major impediment I am marring a deformity something wrong in the vessel and instead of throwing away. He just lumped together again throws it back on the wheel and remakes and that's the nature of restoration in God's kingdom. He never scraps what he's made. He remakes it and I believe that he can do that is doing that in our lives and so we are in a series on Jeremiah and his prophecies of restoration and today we come to a text that has a familiar phrase and about the fire shut up in the bones and when we study it together. You might be a little surprised in its context, and discover here something deep about what a true walk with God looks like and how God sustains us and moves us even sometimes when we don't feel like doing it. Jeremiah chapter 20 I'm reading from the new revised standard version because I like the way that it translates verse 70 Lord, you have enticed me and I was enticed you've overpowered me, and you have prevailed.

I become a laughing stock all day long.

Everyone mocks me whenever I speak I must cry out. I must shout violence and destruction for the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name and within me. There is something like a burning fire shut up in my bone and I'm weary with holding it in and I cannot. Are you familiar with the would you rather game.

Kids love to play this in this good little discussion starters you know where it's like you're presented with a choice of one of two choices, sometimes neither one is what you might like like would you rather always have to hop around 1 foot or always have to walk around squatting. Would you if there's one on the kids list them for discussion. Would you rather turn into a purple bear or a heart-shaped hello every time you felt happy would you rather wear clown nose or clown face paint for the rest of your life. You know it's stuff like that.

Would you rather the only dog food only Food for the rest your life you like that well are our family. My grown kids we are with the family and and have little kids there, and though just one start doing the would you rather and is just is just you. And when they may come up. It's really too and and so they start asking my grown kids some would you rather questions. One was would you rather have rollerskates for feet or have a thousand cats right random random choice to make their and then the little boy he asked Bennett he said would you rather die or be beat up by 100 men, and then die then just that I think I'll just take the straight out death. I guess, and then hello girl I don't know I cats were on the mind. I think they got a number cancer. She said would you rather have $3 million or 3 million cats. That said, well, I believe I take the $3 million and the little girl of Simon been forced to look back and she said interesting.

Jeremiah had a sense, is faced with the would you rather would you rather get revelations from God and be mocked or never hear God speak and be admired. Would you rather speak divinely inspired truth and be scorned for it, or would you rather hide the truth you know and be applauded. Maybe more starkly, would you rather have only God know that you're right and everyone else thinks you're wrong or have everyone think you're right.

And God knows your raw Jeremiah is so honest I'd just you know if you're going to just write a holy book to be propaganda you would you wouldn't come up with the Bible so honest in the way it depicts the people of God. Jeremiah sometimes called the weeping prophet is very honest with God and God then is honest with us on what it was like in his soul to be this amazing profit in a turbulent time and what Jeremiah has to say here is that he has experience in authentic struggle that has been persecuted so much that he really rather just quit preaching altogether. But every time you try to stop mentioning the name of the Lord.

He couldn't help himself because the word was like a fire shut up in his bone. In other words, he says to us.

I was more weary, trying to not talk about God than I was weary when I talked about them was persecuted while things so relevant word for us as we think about what is this fire shut up in our bones that like that what is at what is the Holy Spirit doing and eyes and is relevant also because beloved. The cultures become secularized very quickly around us, and I'm not used to it and no and so very basic things that are true. This are now not believe our culture and when we talk about some of the most basic things of the gospel most basic things about God the creator.

Most basic things about human sexuality must basic things about what it is to love rather than hate. We talk about some of these things is weird to have a culture this that would mark that so Jeremiah is relevant for us. The context of this passage we should go back and look at it verse one of chapter 20. Because here's what has just happened. The most recent of the persecution he's experienced not pressure the priest, the son of MR, who was chief officer in the house, the Lord heard Jeremiah prophesying these things about about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the judgment that was coming against the disobedience of the people and verse two, then pasture beat Jeremiah the prophet and put them in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin gate of the house, the Lord, so Jeremiah was he was physically beaten and then publicly humiliated. You know, put into the stocks where your out just people going by mocking you by your head in your hands are in the stocks there at the temple gates and verse three. The next day when pressure release Jeremiah from the stocks you know you would think that if ever.

Jeremiah was going to tone it down. This might be the moment but instead he said the Lord does not call your name pressure, but terror on every side, for thus says the Lord. Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and all your friends they shall fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon shall carry them captive to Babylon shall strike them down with the sword. And this is by the way, we are all the way to chapter 20. This is the first mention of Babylon all the judgment text become about this is what's gonna happen, but here it gets more specific. So Jeremiah is persecuted. He's beaten he is put into the stocks where people walk out all day and laugh at him and he comes out.

He's tempted to tone it all down so you don't have to keep suffering. This persecution, but instead he does the opposite in the Lord speaks to him. More specifically than ever before and wasn't just the Empire that wanted Jeremiah silent the religious establishment did this priest did and this is the nature of so much of Jeremiah's industry while as I'm thinking about about Jeremiah imagine that something like this like a preacher who is a very good preacher and has prophetic power and his preaching, preaching in the man's bone, but imagine nobody really want to sit through his sermons.

Nobody really appreciated them and a few supporters yet a faithful administrator but otherwise not much support he could've done a lot of other things he could have prospered and eyes. The world in many other ways. And maybe it takes a preacher to understand one, but I know how he felt.

He just had to preach. There's no other way to describe and hardly a week went by, though, that he did say why my doing this and why can't I have a normal life talent right will have more teaching moment from today's important series.

Many Christians in America today. You're starting a nation's culture has turned away from God values in our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or had a biblical one can make you feel like an alien in your own culture to learn from Danielle when he respects out through our special office not you can learn to live under the favor of God in Aryan culture the way Daniel gave before the end in mind senior Pastor Alan's idea series favored for you may feel like a stranger in this world that is not shared favor to Daniel and his four man race is a timeless brown nation will not only help these troubling times. It will also help someone else links for your partnership with our night ministry. We missed 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website Pastor Alan.like today's teaching now. Can you once again is it I just feel like I'm just so blessed of all preachers.

I know I'm just so blessed and blessed by you blessed by this ministry. By the grace to be here amongst people that love God and love the word like I do are just so kind and just got about the best church of and but it also it's hard but I meet with pastor friends from around the nation every year were about 25 to 30 of the pastors the largest churches are denomination were friends and we get together we talk every January and we laugh and we cry. We share stories and we learn from each other and we play golf and it's a good time just for three days together would become good friends this year as we went around the table and honestly shared with one another. After two years of pandemic and 50% of them opened up and said that they had given consideration to quitting the last two years, two of them had begun to struggle with alcohol. One merely had fallen into an affair and we pray for one another. Jeremiah's real he is hearing straight from heaven. He is powerful and the word and put them in into the stocks and walking by laugh. So I think of a preacher who can really preach and he just doesn't have a congregation that wants to hear him and one day he is wondering how to wind up in this situation and suddenly the image comes to his mind. The decision on. I feel like I feel like the wife of unknowable wonderful husband who the whole society doesn't like for all the wrong reasons. He thinks like this is like. I feel like I'm I'm I'm married to that one and so what whenever his name is maligned, my name is malign but I'm disconnected and there's no way around and the preacher thinks about is how to dance in the first place.

Why sign up for this hat. I wind up being called end of this and suddenly the image comes to mind and he just blurted out, he says. I tell you what happened. I was seduced by God is a weird word to think of being there, but that's really what this word means enticed it actually is the same word in Hebrew that is used to describe the situation where man has the Lord woman to his bedchamber and all you must do in following up to marry her. It is the word that is used when they were getting Delilah to do what she did to Sampson this word is used, and it is importantly, the word that God himself uses in Hosea 2 to speak about how you plan to bring Israel out of exile. He said therefore I am now going to allure her leader into the desert and speak tenderly to her. Jeremiah essentially saying I reason that I become glad to God as he made himself so attractive to me, some us as we worship him in the beauty of his holiness fell in love with God. That's what happened.

That's what happens to and I just like thinking, oh God this way, and all his this image in the Bible so often of his like wonderful groom is courted is the love I love all in modern times in the marriage proposals are so much better than what we used to do and my son Bennett. He is he when he when he proposed to Amy and they he had. They went out to dinner at their restaurant where they had their first date and then I see she knew it was happening because then I came out from down there was a limo that was there and that their first date had been at a dance in this big room it was made into a ballroom on the top floor of one of the big academic buildings on the Baylor campus and he had gone and worked with the administration to get permission for him to have the building opened up for him that night just for them to be in that room and he had a photographer they are ready to go take pictures in Indio and it just was this romantic and then and then all the all the family. We all knew was that so we all flown into Texas and we were there for a party afterwards.

I took my wife to Darrell's restaurant in which came back over to her parents house and I went down the basement proposed to her that was better than what some we all did Mandela have made some of these proposals. Today there on the label alike.

Here's a few images that they look like just ordinary umbrellas and then all of a sudden she's looking up there and she can see it all spelled out with you, Mary. That's cute in this beautiful and I like this couple. They like to go for rinds and then they look back on the GPS would track you know where they'd been running, but he had carefully lined this up so I checked back there route spelled out marry me? That's really cute. I think maybe my favorite read about a couple they got into a back seems being at sea world where they could go swimming with the dolphins you mess in itself like your swimming with dolphins, and then all of a sudden when the train dolphins pops up with a buoy, will you marry me. Not quite as good as going to Darrell's and then in the basement but in the old days has a man win the hand of a woman courtship he might serenade her or compose poetry writer a love note or sender arose every day and when you court someone like that.

There's no room for pride in that groom you are you are in a sense you're putting yourself all out there and and it's not like capturing a prisoner it is. It is like attracting the one you love. This is why God is never wanted to smother you never wanted to force you. He wants to intrigue, not simply suffocate. God doesn't want to consume his sweetheart.

He was to commune with her. He wants her Alan Ryan news message. The burning inside your bow from the series remade. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio shearing is parting good news.the date just a moment. Many Christians in America today. You're starting a nation's culture has turned away from God values in our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or had a difficult one to make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from when he was exiled to the pagan through our special office not you can learn to live under the favor of God in Aryan culture the way Daniel gave before the end in mind senior Pastor Alan's idea series favored for you may feel like a stranger in this world that is not shared favor to Daniel and his four man race is a timeless brown nation will not only help through these troubling times. It will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with our night ministry. We call us at 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website. Pastor Alan.org bickering distributors your Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. The conclusion of this teaching in their series remade. It's the one like our God with a message like this that we've heard we take with us for the next God has his way of of of doing a work in us where what he wants becomes what we want an end to me that is so much of the aim of all spiritual growth. It is to say that when you have a fire shut up in your bones. Like Jeremiah says Rod rather not even mention them. I like to stop all of this, but he can't, and will learn more about people like Martin Luther who who would like like Jeremiah would've loved to not become the great reformer is uncomfortable. But something happens inside where you can help it, and and I think this is what God wants to do in us and in for listers he's doing this and you and when you feel your affections change when you when you feel your desires change. This is God at work within you.

He doesn't want to simply give you laws and rules and ask you to follow his mandates.

He doesn't want to simply overpower you and overcome your will. You want your will to come into alignment with his when you want to do what he wants to do that spiritual growth. Thanks for listening today.

Visit us online@pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 if you only caught part of today's teaching. Not only can you listen again online also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources@pastoroutand.org that's pastor out.O RG. Today's good news message is a listener supported production Allen Wright ministries