They did not ask, “Where is the LORD?” … The priests did not ask, “Where is the LORD?” … My people … have forsaken me, the spring of living water (Jeremiah 2:6, 8, 13).

Unhook is our theme word for this third week of our Restart! Series: it’s hard to really get restarted if you’re chained to something! How do we get unhooked so that we can get going again?

The feeling of being stuck, hooked, chained is a bad one.  We resolve, then unresolve; we try and then fail, sometimes repeatedly.  We hate our bad habits and their bad fruit, yet keep sowing the same seeds.  We get caught in endless cycles of trying harder-failing, trying harder-failing—kind of like a car chained to a tree.  Despite all the noise and energy expended, we end up in ever-deepening ruts (and maybe with a burned-out engine to boot).

Or maybe we give up, get defeated and decide to just settle into the misery.  We numb the pain through distraction, addiction, comfort-mechanisms, blame-shifting, victimhood, self-pity.

Jeremiah 2 addresses a stuck people.  God, through his prophet, charges them with three sins: they have not asked “Where is the LORD?”; they have forsaken the true Source of living water; they have attempted to meet their needs by creating containers that always break.  Let’s focus on the first.

“Where is the LORD?”  This is not an abstract theological question, but a very helpful, practical one.  In the midst of whatever stuck-ness we find ourselves in, is our first response to ask, “Lord, where are you in this?  What are you saying to us?  What are you doing, where are you already at work, and how are we to join you?”  Or do we automatically default to “figuring things out,” “guess we’ll just have to find our own way,” or “God helps those who help themselves”?  All too often, we blame ourselves or blame others.  Yes, it’s true:  the things that keep us chained and stuck are sometimes the bad fruit of what others have done to us, and sometimes the bad fruit of our own sin.

But the answers, the unhooking, can’t come from the people who forged the chains in the first place.  If I’m stuck because of the evil done to me by others (parents, spouses, bosses, children, etc.), they are not the ones to unhook me.  And if I’m desperately in need of a restart but still spinning my wheels because of my own sin and folly, I’m probably the last person to consult or hire to get myself out of my mess.

“Where is the LORD?”  It’s a personal question.  It’s not about God’s “location,” but a question that bends our attention back to God himself.  The people Jeremiah addressed had not stopped “going to church,” reading their Bibles, or praying; they had stopped relating to the Lord himself.  They had stopped knowing the LORD, stopped knowing who God is, stopped remembering what God had said to them and done for them, stopped seeking God in the midst of the mess they found themselves in.

No wonder they were stopped.  Stuck. In need of unhooking before they could get restarted.

These are not easy questions; this is not a quick, painless process.  Yes, evil may have been done to me—but where is the Lord in that and for me?  Yes, I may be suffering from the evil I have done—but where is the Lord in that and for me?  

As we learn to take our eyes off them and what they have done or failed to do, and off ourselves and on what we have done or failed to do—as we ask, and keep on asking, “Where is the LORD?”—we will find ourselves hearing a new sound in the midst of all our noise. 

It’s the sound of running water, living water, finding its way toward us.

Do you sense you need to get unhooked from something?  If so, what is it—can you be specific?

What would getting unhooked look like?  What could you start, or restart?