Friendship:

Where have you been faced with hard consequences of your own foolish behavior? What happened and how did you handle it?

AN UPSIDE DOWN PLAN

Read Matthew 11:28-30, Luke 9:23-25 & Isaiah 55:6-9. How would you summarize these verses? Jesus calls us to bear His yoke, and to take up our cross daily to follow Him – a call to die and to be raised. But He is good. So how have you seen that His ways that are not like the ways of this world?

Read Jeremiah 27:1-2 & 5-6. Remember the context: God was disciplining Judah for their sin and idolatry. What does this say about the LORD’s sovereign rule over all the earth and its kingdoms? Where has humbling yourself before Him and His plan been a good thing even if it was not comfortable or pleasant at the time? Read Revelation 7:9-10. How would you describe to someone God’s plan for all the nations? How does this trump nationalism or any superiority of race?

PRIDE & UNBELIEF

Read Jeremiah 27:8, 11 & 14. What does the LORD promise in these verses? (If we could write it as a formula: “Honor His plan > live. Defy His plan > perish.”) Where have you seen your own capacity to believe what you want to believe, while defying what God had plainly revealed?
Read Jeremiah 28:10-17. How have you behaved or at least thought like Hananiah? When you learned of His cross-centered Plan for the first time, how did you think His ways were foolish? How have you lived doubting God’s Word as if you know better than He does? Confess your pride and unbelief to Jesus, asking Him to forgive you for your folly, self-deception and destructive ways.

WHOSE WORD PREVAILS?

When others twist God’s Word or tempt you to question it, what does it mean to trust Him? Compared with Hananiah’s folly in ch. 28, read John 10:17-18. By contrast, Jesus submitted to His Father’s terrifying call (in the Garden of Gethsemane) trusting His Father’s promise of resurrection. Read John 14:18-20 & Romans 8:28. What does Jesus promise to those who seek God or treasure Him? In His discipline how does God work to kill your comfort in what will kill you if it’s left unchanged? In unbelief how have you lived as if He’s trying to kill you? What lies are you trusting that promise comfort but actually result in your perishing?

Only Jesus is Truth, and however inconvenient the truth is, He gives life!

Prayer:

1. Worship the LORD for His goodness and wisdom. Praise Him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that He is good in all that He does and in all that He calls us to, even when it to a hard assignment.
2. How have you lived doubting God’s Word as if you know better than He does? Confess your pride and unbelief to Jesus, asking Him to forgive you for your folly, self-deception and destructive ways.
3. Give thanks to Jesus for His work to turn evil on its head by His death and resurrection! Thank Him for draining evil and death of their power and for His ability to work all things together for good to His people.
4. Who do you know that by unbelief implies that they know better than God does, or that He is insufficient for their needs? Pray for them, asking the Lord to show them mercy and open their eyes to their peril.
5. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you trust God’s work through death and resurrection. Pray for a faithful trust in His discipline that the LORD is not attacking you, only your comfort in what would kill you if it’s left unchanged.