I leave tomorrow morning for two weeks in Africa, one training in Kenya and one in Ivory Coast. I’m bummed cause my malaria is lingering on with fatigue, coughing, dizzyness, etc. But in my devotion times each morning I’ve been working through Jeremiah, and I realize I have NOTHING to complain about. Jeremiah had it tough!

He is a lone voice crying out the message of God in the midst of a culture that has turned away from God. Other “prophets” are prophesying lies, saying the opposite of the doom and gloom message of destruction that Jeremiah is preaching. Jeremiah knows that Judah’s future is bleak, and he correctly prophesies that Babylon will soon decimate the land and inhabitants. He calls people to prepare, and get ready to peacefully yield to the Babylonians, or else they will all be killed and cities all burned to the ground.

Each time he is asked to share the word of the Lord, and he communicates truthfully, the king, princes and other leaders unleash in wrath against him, throw him in prison, or worse. He and Baruch painstakingly write down on a scroll the words of his prophesy only to have the king take it and burn it up. I was reading today in chapter 37-38 that Jeremiah left Jerusalem to check on his property in Benjamin, and is apprehended as a traitor, charged with trying to defect to the Babylonians. He is thrown into a dungeon, but not just any dungeon. He is lowered with ropes into a mire and sank deep into the gunk where he would either starve, die of thirst, or suffocate if he sank too deeply into the bottom of the cistern. A few friends rescue him before he dies, but his life constantly hangs in the balance. He is faithfully serving God and doing what God has called him to do, and yet his life is a mess.

As I considered his example, a few applications came to mind:

1. Expect difficulties. Just because we are following God, it doesn’t mean things will go our way. In fact the converse is true. This flies square against the “prosperity” message so common around the world. As we speak truth from God, expect opposition and hardship.
2. Beware of false teachers. The prophets of Israel should have been communicating God’s message, and they looked the part and preached a message of hope, but it was not from the Lord. It was what people wanted to hear. Jeremiah was a lone voice preaching an unpopular but true message.
3. Keep perspective. Whatever I’m going through, and probably whatever you’re going through, it is not as bad as what Jeremiah experienced. I think part of the reason God shares examples in Scripture of people like Jeremiah and Job and Joseph and Paul is to remind us that people who endured much worse difficulty than we do remained faithful to the Lord. Don’t lose hope. God is still working, even if all seems lost, like when Jeremiah was sinking into the mire in the dungeon.

By God’s grace, let us press on in the race with eyes on the Prize.