Starting Now

I am writing this from Brookwood Hospital.

Starting Now

Taken from Jeremiah 1: 4-19, this lesson begins the series by helping us to come to the realization that God calls, equips and directs each of us for His service.

Discovering Your Destiny -

Just like Jeremiah See Jeremiah 1: 4-10, each of us has call to service - a destiny.
The call was formed before we were because God‘s planning is eternal. It didn’t just come up because one day, God figured out that we could actually do so something for Him. Actually, as it turns out, we really can’t do anything for Him. Not even Billy Graham can. It is only through

Christ who lives in us that we can do something - in fact "all things" as Paul says. See Ephesians.
Jeremiah was called to prophesy - give God’s word to the whole nation of Judah. Maybe our individual call maybe diffferent. But the call isn’t important, the caller is. Calls can’t be measured or compared to see whose call is more "important." That misses the whole point. In your judgment, whose call is more important, that of Billy Graham or that of Henrietta Mears, the youth worker who won him [and Bill Bright] to the Lord?

Jeremiah protested his call - "I’m just a kid." Like most of us have come to think with a call. Few of us see and receive it readily as did Mary the Mother of Jesus when she said "be it unto me and thou hast said."

God promised to be with Jeremiah and empowers him to do the work. So it is with us. God never sends any out "at their own charges." That would set us up for inevitable failure and would be counter productive to God’s greatest lesson for us to learn which is that we need God for everything we do from salvation on down to the very air we breathe.

God "set his words in Jeremiah's mouuth." Again, so it is with us. God’s word is truth. We cannot speak the truth is our words are not God’s words.

God Equips You. Jeremiah 1:11-16.

God specifically equipped Jeremiah with two visions that nobody else had - the almond tree and the boiling caldron. Jeremiah saw in those two "equippings" that just as spring follows the budding of the almond tree, the fulfillment of the prophesy would follow its utterance. Specifically, the politics of the great kingdoms to the north would "boil over" and flow over and consume Judah.

The revelation of the two visions gave Jeremiah great confidence to stand up against kings and people who didn’t want to hear his words. That courage was supernatural and was in itself, a great "equipping." We most of us called to do such a thing, a similar "double portion " of courage from God would be needed - and being needed it would be supplied by God.

Get Busy Serving. (Just Do it!)

Jeremiah 1:17-19. God called Jeremiah to "just do it" now. God said tat He, God, had given Jeremiah the strength to do this - now. When God gives a gift, He gives it now. Jeremiah didn't have to go to the seminary or even take an on-line course. He was called to speak now.

When God calls us to service, the time is always "now." That doesn’t necessarily that we take the action now, but it means that we make the irrevocable commitment now. Remember that "now" is a unit of time which God created for man as a convenience for man. It doesn't apply to God himself. If God had a wristwatch, the time on it would always be "now." This is a function of God’s "eternalness."

God tells Jeremiah is this passage that he has recast or reconstituted him as an "iron pillar or bronze walls" so as to be able to stand against even the whole land of Judah. In each confrontation, Jeremiah was called to act "now." In so doing he Jeremiah would prevail because He, God, has already prevailed.

To sum it up.

• God call each of us to serve Him, not because He needs the work done, but because we need to serve Him. He promises to fully equip us for the call. The time for us to act is now.
  

Are you up to the task?