I Am Not Consumed

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:23, 24

What in your life consumes you more than anything else, what makes your life feel hopeless and makes you question whether you can go on? Nothing is more consuming than sin, and sin piled on sin is a death spiral with no escape. Past sin has been so destructive that you think the results cannot possibly be remedied.

I attended the funeral of a man who was a dear friend for most of my life. He died at 89, but except for a fall from a ladder up in a tree some ten years ago, which had a great impact on his health, it was easily expected he would live to over 100. He always had Christ on his lips, speaking of his Lord to others as a joyful daily habit. One of his traits was sharing his wonder each day and reminding others that today is a new day, a day to begin anew. God’s mercy and compassion are such that, despite what happened yesterday, today is truly a new day. “Isn’t that amazing? he would say. This truth, as described in Lamentations, refutes the lie that our sins can consume us and that no remedy or hope exists for the situation we find ourselves in. This thinking has driven many a Christian into the pit of despair.

Jeremiah, known as “the weeping prophet,” certainly traversed some deep valleys. He was no stranger to tears, pain, and misery, or to being thrust from one dismal situation to the next. This small book following the book named after him, Jeremiah, is, after all, named Lamentations, a lament. Yet amid sorrow is the promise of compassion and mercy, capable of remedying any crushing situation. Some do not believe it, so they spiral into greater despair and more sin. They have little room for patience, for waiting quietly for God’s remedy by placing hope in Him while earnestly seeking Him (see 3:25-26). Hope and seeking are absent when there is no belief in the promise.

When sin is in the process of consuming your life, and you recognize it, you are faced with several options: (1) My sin is too great, and my circumstance is too impossible for remedy; so I do nothing except continue in it, hoping my despair will somehow pass. (2) I want a solution immediately. I want to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. There is no place for hope or waiting. (3) I believe the Lord’s promise and put my hope in Him, seeking Him through genuine repentance and patiently waiting for His salvation, however long it takes.

When I was in Vietnam and praying to survive the year-long tour, experiencing one brush with death after another, God’s answer to my prayer could have been my getting wounded so badly it would require my removal from the battlefield immediately and being sent home, or He could display His presence to me through continuing to surround me with His mercies and protection. In this case, my year would not shorten. It would remain a 365-day year in which I would continue on the battlefield. I would have to wait patiently for the LORD’s salvation for the rest of what seemed like a longer-than-normal year. Very often, our salvation from the situation sin has created in our lives requires patient waiting for what the Lord is doing or will do, a process that tests the mettle of your hope in Him. It isn’t authentic hope if you expect an immediate escape and removal of the pain of the dilemma your sin has thrust you into. There is no set time, as in my year-long tour in Vietnam. The time of waiting is in God’s hands, molding your hope into a persevering one, which is hope indeed. Some are unwilling to put on such a character of faith and choose to sink into greater despair or become insensitive to sin altogether. The reckoning will eventually come after the conscience has been seared and has done its damage.

Sin always consumes everything in its path, but its remedy is nearer than you know. Sin will always tell you, “I have gone too far, and there is no going back.” But God’s promise still rings in the ear of the hearer of His Word, “My compassions never fail; they are new every morning!”

“There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.”

(Refrain from an African-American spiritual taken from Jeremiah 8:22)