The Betrayal Blessed Me

I haven't done one of these in a while, yall. First of all I want to apologize for not keeping up with these. I feel horrible. I feel like I've been stuffed with so much word and I've been holding onto it, but y'all.....this right here......it really blessed me.

Jeremiah 20:1-13 The Message (MSG)

Life’s Been Nothing but Trouble and Tears

20 1-5 The priest Pashur son of Immer was the senior priest in God’s Temple. He heard Jeremiah preach this sermon. He whipped Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks at the Upper Benjamin Gate of God’s Temple. The next day Pashur came and let him go. Jeremiah told him, “God has a new name for you: not Pashur but Danger-Everywhere, because God says, ‘You’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you. All your friends are going to get killed in battle while you stand there and watch. What’s more, I’m turning all of Judah over to the king of Babylon to do whatever he likes with them—haul them off into exile, kill them at whim. Everything worth anything in this city, property and possessions along with everything in the royal treasury—I’m handing it all over to the enemy. They’ll rummage through it and take what they want back to Babylon.

6 “‘And you, Pashur, you and everyone in your family will be taken prisoner into exile—that’s right, exile in Babylon. You’ll die and be buried there, you and all your cronies to whom you preached your lies.’”

7-10 You pushed me into this, God, and I let you do it.
    You were too much for me.
And now I’m a public joke.
    They all poke fun at me.
Every time I open my mouth
    I’m shouting, “Murder!” or “Rape!”
And all I get for my God-warnings
    are insults and contempt.
But if I say, “Forget it!
    No more God-Messages from me!”
The words are fire in my belly,
    a burning in my bones.
I’m worn out trying to hold it in.
    I can’t do it any longer!
Then I hear whispering behind my back:
    “There goes old ‘Danger-Everywhere.’ Shut him up! Report him!”
Old friends watch, hoping I’ll fall flat on my face:
    “One misstep and we’ll have him. We’ll get rid of him for good!”

11 But God, a most fierce warrior, is at my side.
    Those who are after me will be sent sprawling—
Slapstick buffoons falling all over themselves,
    a spectacle of humiliation no one will ever forget.

12 Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, no one fools you.
    You see through everyone, everything.
I want to see you pay them back for what they’ve done.
    I rest my case with you.

13 Sing to God! All praise to God!
    He saves the weak from the grip of the wicked.

Listen, we all go through things in life, and betrayal can be one of the ugliest things you can experience. People can say whatever they want about you and you can brush it off, but I guarantee you feel differently when someone who really knows you says something sideways to you. In this passage, Jeremiah was experiencing just that. His friends, well who he thought were his friends, were plotting on his downfall. 

And it hurts. I know it does. You don't know what you're going to do or who you can or cannot trust. But that betrayal is still working for you. Remember the Bible says ALL things work together for the good of them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). It don't feel good, but it's working for you good. 

Psalm 66:12 New King James Version (NKJV)

12 You have caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water;

But You brought us out to [a]rich fulfillment.

God has a purpose for your life and you can't fulfill that purpose without going through the steps. It's like making a cake. You can't skip the eggs, the flour, the milk, the mixing, the beating, and all the other steps and expect to still get the cake at the end. It doesn't work like that. You can't rush the process. Look at this verse:

1 Peter 1:7 The Message (MSG)

6-7 I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. 

You can't come out as pure gold if you haven't been tried in the fire. To be honest, if a certain component of who you are is not tried, how do you know if it works right? How do you know if your TV works if you never turned it on? You'd never know. 

I'll use myself as an example. I never thought that I had low self-esteem. I just considered myself to be a really humble person. Being betrayed by someone that I've known half my life allowed me to see the error in my ways. Yeah, he was wrong for betraying me the way he did, but I allowed it to happen. My actions allowed it to happen. I wouldn't have never gotten to that realization had the betrayal never happened. 

Let's keep it all the way 100. Some of us don't seek God at the same intensity when everything is going right. The minute things go wrong, we're snotting and slobbing and crying all over the place. God can't show us what He really wants from us if we're not paying attention to Him. So things like betrayal happen and we're like "why God why?" and He is literally trying to tell you that  person couldn't go to where He called you to be. That person served their purpose. They were to get you to the point where God could bless you.