Sunday, October 25, 2009

Unappreciated Jeremiah

I am thankful for stories in the Bible that help put things in my life in perspective. I am currently feeling unappreciated in a certain area of my life. I feel that I have something to offer others that would be a blessing to them in this area, but not only do those people not seem to want my help, a few individuals apparently are doing everything they can to make sure I don't help anyone in this area even in a small way. Like I said, I am not feeling appreciated. I am studying the book of Jeremiah. Like so many of God's prophets, he was not appreciated. God gave him a message and he faithfully repeated it. If the people of his day had listened and taken it to heart, they would have lived and the nation of Judah would not only have not been destroyed in gruesome horribleness, Judah and its people would have had a prosperous peace with God's blessings flowing through them to the nations around. The rulers and people of Judah didn't listen. They also didn't want to have God's message spoken around them, they preferred to hear the lies of false prophets who told them what they wanted to hear. So they plotted to have Jeremiah killed and did everything they could to make his life miserable. Even the folks in his home town plotted to do him in. I can imagine there were days that Jeremiah felt very unappreciated. Probably even questioned whether what he was doing was from God. God had given him very clear instructions to keep giving God's word to Judah, so Jeremiah kept on being faithful and doing what God wanted. Kind of puts my problem in a different light. No one is trying to kill me. No one is shouting at me to shut up. No one is accusing me of treason just because I am doing what God tells me to do. Since I don't have a clear word from God to do what I think would be helpful in this area, I am just going to back off. If I get a clear message from God, I hope I will have the courage to do what God wants me to do, otherwise I'll just leave it in His hands.

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