“The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month” (Jeremiah 1:1-3 ESV)
Do you ever wonder why there are times when God seems so distant? Have you had times when God seemed so close, when his presence was palpable only to be followed by a period when it seemed he was nowhere to be found?
Sometimes God is distant because we have withdrawn from him! By our attitudes & our actions we have chosen a path of life that is not in keeping with his purpose, thus we have ever so slightly pushed God away. But there are times of great joy & refreshing when God was so close that we could almost hear him speak – only to be followed by silence!
Thus it was for Jeremiah. God’s word came to him, but it did not come in one smooth, continuous movement. Apparently there were YEARS between the delivery of God’s prophetic message. Though the burden of the message was great, can you not sense how close God would have seemed to be! Those mountain top times were followed by days, weeks, even years when God’s voice seemed painfully silent. Eons when Jeremiah would have LONGED in waiting for God to speak again. Oh God why do you leave me waiting & wanting for your your message. Times when Jeremiah must have wondered if this was all there was – had God called his work to an end?
These times of waiting are difficult for us, but so important and productive for the ministry of God’s word. God may have used those times of silence to work on Jeremiah’s life for what was to come. Only God, in his sovereign nature, knew how the people would respond to the message. Jeremiah would need to learn to rely totally upon God’s power in the times when people might reject both the message and the prophet. Waiting is a time of preparation. God may have also used those times of waiting to instill with Jeremiah an intensity of passion for God’s message. Face it, there are times when our relationship with God is “rolling” that we are prone to take it for granted! By God inserting a PAUSE, a yearning for the message would rise in Jeremiah’s life!
Waiting is tougher now than ever, because we have so much in our lives in an instant. Through the use of mobile phones, we can communicate with anyone we want and almost watch anything we want whenever we want! Is God walking you through a time of waiting? Are you wondering where God went, and cannot easily find something in your life that created the distance? God is using the time of waiting to make us the people he needs us to be! You think about that!
