Why is my pain unending
and my wound grievous and incurable?
Will you be to me like a deceptive brook,
like a spring that fails?
Therefore this is what the LORD says:
"If you repent, I will restore you
that you may serve me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be my spokesman.
Let this people turn to you,
but you must not turn to them.
I will make you a wall to this people,
a fortified wall of bronze;
- Jeremiah 15:18 (NIV)

The bronze statue is an analogy used in the book to describe how God our creator see us as his creation. If He created us in His likeness and with purpose, then we are valuable to Him. We are worth something to God. Like an artist who takes time and careful details to construct a masterpiece, God has done that for each of us. We are His masterpiece. When we believe we are not enough, we are telling God His creation is not enough. God sent His only son to die for people He loved and created. Jesus did not die for worthless, wretched souls. He saw something in each of us worth dieing for. We are saved from our sin to live out our lives in fullness...wholeness, to pass on the love and message. We are intended to be full, not empty, fulfilled, not unfulfilled, valued, not unvalued people. Being not enough is as costly to God, the Creator as to us, the creation.

When we believe we are not enough, believe the original lie, we are left to desire something to fill us further. We are left to act on the lie, thinking...and this will make me better. That is what Eve believed in the garden. Debating over the believability of the story is really missing the point. The point is to show the lie being whispered, the belief of not enough, and the prideful action of I must have more. Are we still living out that lie today? Absolutely. This house, this bank account, this picture of a good Christian, this drug...It’s the apple we are feeding ourselves. It’s the apple we were fed as children. It’s the apple you have offered others. It’s the lie God is begging us to overcome through the abundant love He is offering in its place. God wants to uncover the lie in each of our lives so we can be restored to the masterpiece He desired when He created us. The bronze statue, the paradise of a right relationship with God and a true understanding of who we are in Him is within each of us. It starts with understanding that through God’s love and grace...we are enough. We don’t need the image, the ladder, or the gauze. It starts with the knowledge of why -- questioning why, while funneling down our sin to reveal the core (which will inevitably be there waiting)...I am not enough. We have been handed down this sin through time, acted upon it, and fallen further and further from God's intention for our lives. Today is the day to be released from its bondage and be restored to our intended selves. You are a masterpiece created in love, for love.

Here are some why conversations:

1. Why are you addicted to alcohol/drugs/shopping?
It makes me forget my troubles.

Why do you have troubles?
Because nothing ever goes my way...People have hurt me...I have bad luck

Why would alcohol/drugs/shopping fix those troubles?
I can forget them...

Why keep choosing something that is temporary?
I don’t know.

Do you realize you are worth more than a temporary fix?
I don’t feel worth anything anymore.

When you realize your worth, you will find a real solution. You will be fortified to change your life.
Do you know how I can get out of this for good?

2. Why do you let him abuse you?
Because he is my husband and I love him.

Why do you think that is love?
That is all I’ve ever known as love.

Why does love hurt?
I guess it shouldn’t.

Then, do you think you define love differently than you should?
I guess.

Why is this all the love you get to have in life? Why so little for yourself?
I take what I can get, I guess.

Are you worth more? Are you worth an abundant amount of love?
I’ve never felt worth that...no.

Well, you are. Once you realize your worth, real change will happen in your life.
How do I realize my worth?


* Today, ask yourself a why question. Funnel all the way down to the core of worthlessness in your dialog.



Prayer/Mantra:
Father, help me to feel your abundant love for me. Help me to see the bronze statue in the life You have given me. Forgive me for turning to other things, away from Your gift, toward things that never really satisfied or to people who I expected could fulfill me completely. Forgive me for not believing Your Son’s death was the ultimate gift, the supreme show of love. You gave Him for me because you believed in me. Help me now, Father, to believe in myself, to see myself the way you see me. Help me use that abundance of love for Your good in my life and the lives of others. I have had it all along; I never needed the sin. Thank you.

Reflection:

We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs. ~Mignon McLaughlin

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ~Matthew 6:25

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. ~Vincent Van Gogh

Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. ~Luke 12:6

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly. ~Buckminster Fuller

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ~Romans 5:8

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows. ~John Powell

In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future. ~Sigmund Freud