Reality Check
O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded;
Jeremiah 20:7
You are stronger than I, and have prevailed.
I am in derision daily;
Everyone mocks me.
Jeremiah has spent a great part of his life serving God as a prophet. He had been faithful to do what the Lord had asked him to do. He had worked hard. He had prayed hard. He waited for the blessing of a fruitful ministry and great results. But the results never came. Jeremiah had a ministry reality check.
What do you do when your best ideas and the vision that you had for your ministry does not become a reality?
It’s a moment called “reality check”.
It’s a difficult place to be. And it’s where Jeremiah was. And it led him to consider resignation.
Resignation
Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him,
Jeremiah 20:9
Nor speak anymore in His name.”
Jeremiah decided that he had had enough. He made the decision to quit the ministry. Lord, I cannot do this anymore. I’ve done my best and no one will follow me. I put all of my time into discipling him or her and now they disappear. I’ve been faithful in my ministry but now people are gossiping about me and laughing at me. I quit.
Have you ever felt that way?
This moment of frustration is where the church loses many good leaders.
During a season of reality check many people decide to quit. I’ve been a pastor for 10 years and in that decade I have seen people give up and walk away from the calling that God placed on their life. But in those 10 years I have also watched people respond in a different way to a reality check. I have watched people respond the way Jeremiah responded.
Recommit
But His word was in my heart like a burning fire
Jeremiah 20:9
Shut up in my bones;
I was weary of holding it back,
And I could not.
I love this verse. This verse gives me chills because it is so powerful – it is so pregnant with truth and commitment! Jeremiah comes to the realization that he wanted to quit – everything in his body, everything in his soul wanted to quit but HE COULD NOT QUIT.
There was something deeper than the disappointment. There was something more powerful than the frustration. There was a driving force in Jeremiah’s life that caused him to recommit to the ministry. The gospel, the good news of Jesus was bigger than any hardship he faced.
Jeremiah learned what Paul also learned…
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
2 Corinthians 5:14
The love of Christ – the gospel – compels us. It holds us together, it moves us forward, it gives us motivation in times of frustration. We are motivated by the fact that Jesus died for all because all needed a Savior – that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God – and that because He has saved us we do not live for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again.
That overwhelming truth is what was burning in the heart of Jeremiah – it was shut up in his bones – it was a part of his very being. For Jeremiah, for Paul, for me, and for all of us – quitting the ministry is not an option. We have a higher purpose than ourselves. We have a higher calling than our own comfort. The gospel of Jesus Christ compels us to recommit.