Who are You?
Recently I read Jeremiah 1.5 where God speaks to Jeremiah and tells him: "Before I formed you in your mother's womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world." What an awesome thing to consider - that God had planned things for Jeremiah from before his conception. At first we can answer questions about this and ponder the significance of the ability of Jeremiah to either accept or reject his 'call' and 'appointment' from God, but we can also consider that this knowledge become Jeremiah's anchor through the difficult days when everyone rejected the message he had to bring and the counsel he shared as they enquired of him. For forty years Jeremiah spoke God's word to the people of Israel - many things he spoke about came true within his lifetime, but there was no great revival or turning to God. Yet he maintained his faith in God and persisted in doing what he knew God had given him to do. He did not become an 'robot' just blindly obeying God. He became passionate in his attempts to rescue his people from the inevitable disaster of their ways.
It is always uncomfortable to be challenged about what we are doing in our life - we don't ever want to feel that someone else has any rights to dictate what we do or believe or say and yet every day we fall into the trap of either trying to please others, or trying to do things which show that we do not care about others.
Jeremiah could have just walked away from his conversation with God and said 'Yeh! Not likely! Find someone else to do that!!' If he had he would have missed out on the whole purpose for his birth! I wonder if I have been fulfilling God's plans for me? How about you?
