Jeremiah 15:10 – A Quart Low On Assurance
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Woe is me, my mother,
That you have borne me,
A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!
Gentle Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved insists in a tone almost strident, "You have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.'”
Jeremiah 15:10 is an authentic snapshot on the way to telling this Truth to self. Beautifully, poignantly, pointedly, Jeremiah recognizes his sense of assurance of who he is in God is running low. He recognizes that contending with those forces of the world to which Nouwen points has a cumulative, sapping impact. The manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and destructive people to whom Jeremiah preaches have gotten there contagions into him. He is, he admits, questioning the worth of his very life as he wears down from opposing his contemporaries on what seems to be every front.
This is a man of reflection from whom his spiritual heirs, called to be in the world but not of the world, can learn. He doesn't stop with the symptoms of spiritual fatigue and complain about them. I'm tired. I'm bitter. I don't want to minister to these people anymore. All these may be true, but, if so, Jeremiah sorts through them to their source. He questions the worth of who he is and lays that openly before the Lord.
He gives us, concurrently, a picture of regeneration in which lie the seeds of our hope and his. By going back to his birth and childhood about which he has not heretofore complained, Jeremiah is confessing that there is a sense of identity and fortitude that our parents, that the best of the culture we inherit, cannot give us. That heritage has met its match. Grapple with the world for very long by faith, and we are soon back at start and completely bereft of any initiative we could muster in our own strength.
There is particular hope in Jeremiah allowing us to see him in this state. This is a man whose Scriptural calling was crystal clear. He can intellectually recall it, but this is not enough to forestall a Jeremiah 15:10 confession that he is currently empty. The Jeremiah who comes to this point is not only sure of the job he was given in God's calling, he can specifically recollect the bravery God promised to deepen and develop in him.
The culture is not going to listen, God said in preparation, and you are going to set your face against them. This man, even this man, who undertook and has experience in this certain calling has reached the point of confessing he is a quart low on assurance. We certainly will also.
What honesty to admit that our calling, however dramatic, is not enough! What faith-inflaming hope to know that it doesn't have to be! He Who called us is faithful. He knows the vulnerability, distractibility, and ever-pending weariness of the human instruments He chooses to use.
He is as ready with the reaffirmation and recharge as He was with the initial calling He established for His own from before the foundation of the world. Something strange, brothers and sisters, has not overtaken us when the needle of our spiritual strength reads E and Jeremiah 15:10. This has always been part of the plan.
Strife with men, then, when we have lived in agreement as much as we faithfully can, is actually the flint and friction that sparks faith's new flame. Weary and knowing it, we cry out that our identity can't be found in men, either those who begat us and once bequeathed identity or the ones we deal with now.
We look beyond the people and the parts they play, then, to the One Whose image they bear at their best, and Whose passing on of purpose we REALLY want. He renews. He rebirths. Mercy and ministry, eternity's eyes and enthusiasm, they are all new in Him on the other side of our candid confession.
Woe is me, my mother,
That you have borne me,
A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!
Gentle Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved insists in a tone almost strident, "You have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.'”
Jeremiah 15:10 is an authentic snapshot on the way to telling this Truth to self. Beautifully, poignantly, pointedly, Jeremiah recognizes his sense of assurance of who he is in God is running low. He recognizes that contending with those forces of the world to which Nouwen points has a cumulative, sapping impact. The manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and destructive people to whom Jeremiah preaches have gotten there contagions into him. He is, he admits, questioning the worth of his very life as he wears down from opposing his contemporaries on what seems to be every front.
This is a man of reflection from whom his spiritual heirs, called to be in the world but not of the world, can learn. He doesn't stop with the symptoms of spiritual fatigue and complain about them. I'm tired. I'm bitter. I don't want to minister to these people anymore. All these may be true, but, if so, Jeremiah sorts through them to their source. He questions the worth of who he is and lays that openly before the Lord.
He gives us, concurrently, a picture of regeneration in which lie the seeds of our hope and his. By going back to his birth and childhood about which he has not heretofore complained, Jeremiah is confessing that there is a sense of identity and fortitude that our parents, that the best of the culture we inherit, cannot give us. That heritage has met its match. Grapple with the world for very long by faith, and we are soon back at start and completely bereft of any initiative we could muster in our own strength.
There is particular hope in Jeremiah allowing us to see him in this state. This is a man whose Scriptural calling was crystal clear. He can intellectually recall it, but this is not enough to forestall a Jeremiah 15:10 confession that he is currently empty. The Jeremiah who comes to this point is not only sure of the job he was given in God's calling, he can specifically recollect the bravery God promised to deepen and develop in him.
The culture is not going to listen, God said in preparation, and you are going to set your face against them. This man, even this man, who undertook and has experience in this certain calling has reached the point of confessing he is a quart low on assurance. We certainly will also.
What honesty to admit that our calling, however dramatic, is not enough! What faith-inflaming hope to know that it doesn't have to be! He Who called us is faithful. He knows the vulnerability, distractibility, and ever-pending weariness of the human instruments He chooses to use.
He is as ready with the reaffirmation and recharge as He was with the initial calling He established for His own from before the foundation of the world. Something strange, brothers and sisters, has not overtaken us when the needle of our spiritual strength reads E and Jeremiah 15:10. This has always been part of the plan.
Strife with men, then, when we have lived in agreement as much as we faithfully can, is actually the flint and friction that sparks faith's new flame. Weary and knowing it, we cry out that our identity can't be found in men, either those who begat us and once bequeathed identity or the ones we deal with now.
We look beyond the people and the parts they play, then, to the One Whose image they bear at their best, and Whose passing on of purpose we REALLY want. He renews. He rebirths. Mercy and ministry, eternity's eyes and enthusiasm, they are all new in Him on the other side of our candid confession.
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