God had a plan for your life long before you started learning about it. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” God told Jeremiah. “Before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5 NIV). There is often a rush of excitement learning that God has a special plan and significance for us, special gifts and roles in his larger plan.
We may, however, also experience a sense of apprehension. What if we already had different plans of our own? Different plans do not always prove incompatible, but sometimes they do. Jeremiah’s mission would end up consuming his attention and most of the rest of his life. If our plans prove incompatible with God’s, it’s wise to scrap ours straight off and not waste time fooling around. (Moses and especially Jonah took a good bit of persuasion, and, especially in Jonah’s case, it wasn’t pretty.)
Jeremiah’s objection was different. “Oh, Lord, I can’t speak in front of people! I’m just a kid!” he protested (Jer 1:6). Protocol back then meant that people’s rank in society dictated the weight attached to their words. Who would listen to Jeremiah? Protesting one’s calling was not a new thing. Moses, who could have protested that he was too old (eighty, Exod 7:7), tried to explain to God that he was a bad speaker. Nobody was going to listen to this old shepherd from the backside of the wilderness (Exod 4:10; 6:12, 30). Gideon protested that he was youngest member of the least respected family in his tribe (Judg 6:15). Most of us could at least voice Isaiah’s objection: confronted with God’s absolute holiness, he recognized the finiteness and weakness of his own lips (Isa 6:5).
Most of us would love our lives to have significance in God’s plan. But most of us also recognize that having such a role demands something more than what we seem to be made of. A prophet to the nations? (Jer 1:5) (Jeremiah was mostly a prophet to Judah, but also offered oracles concerning many nations, which helped put his prophecies to Judah in perspective. Later Paul as an apostle to the nations/gentiles would actually proclaim the message of Christ in many gentile cities.)
The bad news is that our initial fear is correct: we’re not capable of doing what God called us to do. The good news is that we’re in good company, as neither is anybody else. God delights to use people who can’t fulfill his call in our own strength, so that we have to depend on him. By the time God fulfills what he calls us to do, we recognize that he gets the credit, not us. (Some of you read my blogs because you know me as a Bible scholar. You probably didn’t know that for a few years I was really worried whether I would even get into a PhD program. I’m doing now what I was made to do, but though it burned in my heart back then, it seemed entirely possible that I would just pastor small congregations and support myself by flipping burgers. And there are still aspects of my calling for which I look to the Lord.)
The really good news is that when God calls us, he is with us to fulfill his calling. It’s not our doing: it’s him using us (Jer 1:8-10, 18-19). God’s word was going to come to pass, because God was speaking it (1:12, 14-16); but Judah needed to hear the message beforehand, so that they would understand why God was judging them.
Now some more bad news, at least from the human perspective: people were not going to like what God was giving Jeremiah to say. This may be harder on those of us who are sensitive to what others think than on somebody thick-skinned and pugnacious. It was certainly going to be hard on Jeremiah. God’s assurance, “Don’t let them scare you! I’ll rescue you!” (Jer 1:8) gave a hint where this was going. “If you give in to them, you’re through,” God essentially says (1:17). Jeremiah would struggle inwardly, but he never did renounce his message to Judah.
“They’ll fight against you,” God warns, but it will be okay because God will be with him and rescue him (1:19). Centuries earlier, Moses asked, “Who am I?” (Exod 3:11), and instead of answering who Moses was, God reminded him that God was with him (3:12). God also provided a more important declaration of identity: “I AM who I AM” (Exod 3:14). It’s not who we are but who God is that makes the difference.
In the short run, this was bad news for Jeremiah. Following God’s will meant that he would be ostracized and attacked. “Nobody owes me money, nor do I owe money to anybody else, but everybody curses me anyway!” (Jer 15:10). He would have to stay single—to spare him from the grief of having to lose a family when judgment came (16:2-4). He couldn’t attend parties or funerals; separated by his devotion to God, he fed on God’s words but was isolated from what mattered to the rest of society (15:16-17; 16:5-9). His closest friends would turn on him (20:10). He would endure public beating, humiliation and imprisonment for not being appropriately “patriotic” (20:1-3). His own relatives, priests in Anathoth (cf. 1:1), would want to kill him (11:21).
Yet in the long run, he turned out to be the one true prophet of his generation. His generation didn’t listen to him, but after judgment fell, Judah learned their lesson. Three books of the Bible written after Jeremiah’s lifetime emphasize that God’s words to Jeremiah were fulfilled: Daniel (Dan 9:2), the conclusion of 2 Chronicles (2 Chron 36:21-22) and the beginning of Ezra (Ezra 1:1).
When Jesus called disciples to follow him, they had to leave their professions and everything they owned behind, at least for awhile (Mark 1:18, 20). In the end, they found themselves unprepared for Jesus’s even greater demands to take up their cross and follow him (8:34; 15:21)—although that changed after Easter and Pentecost (Acts 2:14, 37, 42).
We live on the other side of Easter and Pentecost. Your calling might seem big or small in others’ eyes. Maybe all you know about God’s plan for you so far is the basics: love him, love your neighbor, love your fellow believers, and share Christ with the world. Whatever God’s plan is for you, are you ready to surrender everything to him? Are you ready to recognize that his plan for you is what is best, and is worth any price you must pay along the way?
