"it Is What It Is!"

"It is What it Is!" Jeremiah 31: 1-6

The other day I prayed and asked the Lord what He wanted me to preach on tonight and by the end of the day He made it abundantly clear. I went to cut a limb using my chainsaw. The chain got stuck and in my attempt to free it, I broke the chain! Then, to cut the grass, the lawn mower cut off and wouldn’t start. My neighbor saw my plight and offered to let me use his mower. I was somewhat reluctant- given how my day was going but he was insistent and happy to help me. I was motoring along when all of a sudden the belt under the mower deck snapped! So off to the store across town with my riding mower and returned. Then- I’m not kidding- I went to use my cordless weed whacker and discovered that it wouldn’t work- seems I stored it next to my fishing rod and loose fishing line had become entangled in the weed whacker and twisted up so tight around the shaft and caused the motor to burn up!. In the meantime, the water department which I had been calling for 6 months finally showed up to fix a leak. The water department workers tried to sympathize with my plight, thinking he might try to make me feel better by saying, “It is what it is!”

It is What it IS- How many of you have uttered this statement or if not have heard it at least a dozen times over the past week. I’ll be honest- I am not a fan of this phrase for a couple of reasons. It is what it is is an expression used to characterize a frustrating or challenging situation that a person believes cannot be changed and must just be accepted. But what if you don’t want to accept it? We may have no other choice but to accept it. These years since the Pandemic has been such a time. We’ve had to deal not only with a deadly virus, and a lot has changed and frankly not a lot of it has been good. Virtually every social convention has been taken away from us or has changed just about everything we do education, the way we work, the way we do social gatherings, the way we do entertainment, medical care, the way we do politics, even the way we do church has changed. It has created the expression of frustration in our society the likes of which we have never seen. You can’t even go get a meal any more because there’s no help available because nobody seems to want to work. And so we respond by shrugging our shoulders and say- “It is What it Is!”

Or do we? Understand there’s a lot about this situation we don’t have to like and we don’t have to accept, but we have to deal with it one way or another. We have to come to terms with it. We can come to terms with the IT in two ways- go on being frustrated with it and drive ourselves down with hopelessness, despair and confusion, or we can look up- look to God and to Jesus Christ and even though we go through the tough times we know only God is going to get us through this and we are going to emerge- one way or another- with victory and not defeat! How do we do this?

I. Remember Above Everything, In the midst of this season God loves You, even in this season of frustration! It is easy to forget that God loves us. Or it can be easy sometimes to take for granted the fact God loves us…Especially when things aren’t going the way we thought they would go! Israel was going through a time like this. Economically, spiritually, militarily- Israel was falling off a cliff as the Babylonians were circling like vultures over an almost-dead carcass. As the Temple is set ablaze and there is panic running through the streets, it seemed as though God had abandoned them, even though they had ignored the pleas Jeremiah had been preaching for 25 years. Yet through all of this, God says in Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD has appeared ]of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you.

How wonderful to know that in spite of how your day is going, or your circumstances or situation- God loves you. He loves you with an everlasting love. Now, this might not mean too much when you are going through a bad day and things keep breaking down- but it’s a whole lot better than thinking God has left you or abandoned you. It’s a whole lot better than thinking that God is somehow punishing you for your sin. A lot of people believe that lie. Jesus tells us in His sermon on the Mount to pray for our enemies, why? “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”- Matthew 5:45 Some are tempted to think, “God, if you love me, why is all this happening to me?”