Jeremiah 1-10
*image courtesy of christgr at stock.xchng
Last week, I was praying with my youngest son, Tripp. He hears me thanking God for him and his brother a lot, and so I guess he’s learning by example. Without my prompting, he prayed, “God, thank you for Corbin (his brother), and mommy, and daddy.” I thought that was great! The next night was even better. He prayed, “God, thank you for Corbin, and mommy, and daddy, and me!”
A few days ago we looked at God’s special creation of every human being as described in Psalm 139 (Day 45). Today, we see another instance of God’s knowledge of the unborn. In Jeremiah 1, God tells Jeremiah that he knew (or possibly “chose”) him before He formed him in the womb. Even before he was fearfully and wonderfully made, God knew all about Jeremiah and his life. Each person is made by God, on purpose.
We are no accident.
We know even more than this – that God knew all about Jeremiah before He formed him, and that He then formed him in the womb. God also tells Jeremiah that before he was even conceived, God appointed him as a prophet. This means that God had a plan for Jeremiah’s life before it ever even began. God had something for Jeremiah to do before his parents even knew he existed.
We are created on purpose, with a purpose.
Jeremiah is initially scared of God’s call on his life. He is afraid because he is young. But to God, this is irrelevant. God set him apart for this task before he was even a single cell of life. How could he be too young now?! God gives Jeremiah courage, even putting His own words in his mouth. Jeremiah goes through the rest of his life and ministry with a great boldness and confidence because he knows that God has sent him (see Jeremiah 20:9).
Was it conceited of my 2-year-old to thank God for himself? Well, for a 2-year-old, we might shrug it off. If we heard a grown man pray that prayer, we might think it arrogant. However, I think it’s perfectly biblical to thank God for ourselves. If we recognize that we are God’s special creation and have value and worth because of that, then it is perfectly acceptable to thank God for us! If we recognize that we have a divine purpose for existing because of God’s plan, then why wouldn’t we thank God for us?
Also, we can have the same confidence in our own lives that Jeremiah had. When we realize that God has a specific plan for our lives, something great for us to accomplish, we can live life boldly. We don’t have to be a great prophet or write a book of the Bible. We simply have to find out what God wants us to do, and do it!
When we were young, we believed there was something big out there for us to do. There was a whole world of possibilities just outside. Let’s recover that. Let’s seek out what pleases the Lord (Ephesians 5:8-10), and then do it! Let’s thank God for us, not because we are great in ourselves, but because we were made on purpose with a purpose.
*via Words of Reason
Words of Reason 