The Dire Straits

As I write this we are nearing the end of a period of mourning for traditional Hebrews. Every year, there is a 3-week period designated as time of mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple. The 3 weeks that began on July 9, 2009 (or Tammuz 17 in the Hebrew calendar) and ends on 30 July (Av 9) contain the anniversaries of tragic events in history. Here are just a few of the events that happen during this period.

Tammuz 17

• This is the day Moses smashed the tablets of the covenant because of the Golden calf
• This is the day that temple services were stopped when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem in 423BC
• This is the day that the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans in 69AD

Av 9

• This is the date Solomon’s temple was burned in 423BC
• This is the date of the destruction of the temple in 69AD
• This is the day that God decreed that the Exodus generation would die because they wouldn’t enter the Holy Land out of fear of the giants that lived there.

For Hebrews this is traditionally a period of fasting and contemplation. There are no weddings, or other joyous events during this period. The weekly readings are from the prophets focusing on sins, penalties, and repentance. They also read from Lamentations, which is where one of the names of these 3 weeks comes from: "Bein haMetzarim" ("Between the straits", from Lamentations 1:3 "All her persecutors overtake her between the dire straits.”)

The purpose of all this is to learn from the mistakes of the past. A key element in all of these tragedies is that they all came from people deciding to put their faith in something other than God. The calf was made because they thought God had forsaken them. The spies put faith in themselves, not God, and so they realized they could not defeat the giants in the Holy Lands.And the temples were destroyed because Israel had chosen to put their faith in other gods, idols, or themselves at various times.

It was not God’s desire that these things happened. On the contrary, this SHOULD have been a great time of celebration and blessings from God. God brought his people to their dire straits and asked them to choose to trust Him. If they had chosen differently, these would be stories of victory and celebration not tragedy.

God is asking us every day to choose.

Do we put our trust in HIM? Or in something else?

It’s easy to trust the things in front of us. They are readily there and the enemy points to them and says, “you can trust this.” Haven’t you ever felt a draw that you could put your faith in something other than God? Your job? A friend? Your spouse? Your money? Or worst of all… yourself?

The Bible clearly teaches us that our trust MUST be in God. People and things will let us down eventually. I can enjoy, and put SOME trust in other people or things, but I have to temper that. I might lose my job. My friends might move away or have their own failings. My money might run out. My spouse might have a hard time, or even die. And eventually, my own strength will run out.But we CAN trust in God through everything. He does NOT fail. He does NOT grow weak. He will NOT forsake you. No matter what you are going through, God is bigger than the giant in front of you.

But he does want to know if we will CHOOSE to trust in Him, or in something else.

That is the purpose of dire straits… to find the answer to that key question.

We all have our giants before us, and they are scary and dangerous. But God promises that He is bigger than our problems, and that He will deliver us through it. And God is always right.

Our fear is that our giants are going to stop us, but the dire strait is not a roadblock designed to hinder us. On the contrary, it is to focus us back to God. It is a mechanism for increased productivity. Hydraulic power plants, rockets and garden hoses employ the same techniques to squeeze a greater degree of power and velocity from the element they constrain. In the same way, we are pressed to create a greater degree of power within us. Assuming we trust God and we choose to go through the narrow space God has prepared for us, we can obtain that power. If we choose to not trust Him, we lose that opportunity to advance, and have to live with the consequences.

In these times we can feel the pressing of our problems and fear that we might repeat mistakes of the past. Instead, this should be a time to rejoice and refocus our faith in God and his promises to us. We rejoice because God is trying to press us through to a great victory. We get that victory if we focus on Him. That is God’s plan for us in this time. God’s plan is to redeem all of our past mistakes and crush our giants.

This is why many Hebrew sages say that the Messiah’s birthday should be 9 Av.

That’s right! If they are right, the same day the temple was destroyed is the day that the Messiah was born.

Merry Christmas!

A word from Chuck Pierce that came to me on 3 July and started me on this study: "A new corridor is forming and I will narrow your way. You must narrow your desires. I am sanctifying desires and narrowing the corridor through which you will walk. You are entering into new alignments and assignments, and coming into a place that will bring you forth into a realm you have not known. You will come from a dark place into light, but the corridor that you have been in is beginning to narrow to push you through into the new.”

Questions to Ponder:

1. How are you being pressed at this time? Can you identify your giants?
2. Can you think of a situation when you put your faith in something other than God? What happened?
3. What burdens might God be asking you to lay down during this season? As you make this list ask yourself how you feel about laying these things down. Is it easy or hard? What is making it easy and/or hard?
4. Are you able to see God working in this pressed place? If so, what does that look like? If not, what is helping to sustain you?
5. Think back to a period of pain and destruction in your life (like the destruction of the temple). Has God transformed those times of mourning into times of restoration and redemption? If the answer is no, do you trust God to make that change?