To Be Like Jeremiah

I am joining a women's bible study this week with some awesome women in my family and in addition I am going to commit to reading a new chapter a day. The Lord led me to the book of Jeremiah this morning. Taking one chapter at a time, I aim to soak in every teaching that the Lord intends for me to receive from this book. In Jeremiah 1:5, His word says "Before I formed you in the womb"...Before I formed Keri Unsworth, I knew you Keri. Before my own parents saw my face or held my hand, the Lord had a purpose designed for my life to His glory. That really puts in perspective that our ULTIMATE purpose is to serve Our Father in Heaven according to what He designed for us to pursue. What else does this put in perspective? Perhaps the time, energy, emotion, and struggle we invest, many of us, with our biological fathers needs to be reevaluated as energy we could be using to seek with our entire heart and mind - His ULTIMATE purpose to make the name of Jesus Christ reality to those around us. In just these few opening words, I am humbled and in awe of His power and omniscience "I knew you first"...so why do we invest everything that we are in what other people want us to do? No one has this knowledge of who we are other than the Lord -so surely other people's desires and plans for us can not and will not even match what can transpire when we fulfill the path that God has designed us for. His Word says that He ordained Jeremiah to speak His Word before anyone even knew him. It is in this verse I realize that in the same way, I need to understand what God set forth in me to do - even before anyone knew me. This has a huge impact when you really focus on God's purpose. If God's purpose for us was set forth before anyone knew us, that means we can NOT fail and that any time we have failed and we have experienced the words of others telling us that we can NOT do something, they are possibly very very wrong and we should never focus on what people believe about us, but focus on what God knows - and knew - about us from the day we were born. The church I attend, the pastor is often challenging every Jesus lover to ask yourself..."what would you do if you KNEW you could not fail". And that is why I LOVE the book of Jeremiah - because most of us know the answer for the design of our lives just like Jeremiah knew that he was called to go share God's message, but we are afraid. And in verse 1:8 and through the entire book of Jeremiah the Lord commands "DO NOT BE AFRAID of their faces...of their words". So many of us are living a content existence with the knowledge that we are called to something far more impactful - but we fear losing money, losing family, losing friends, losing losing losing. Only because we fear what we do not know. And this is why the Lord uses His Word to teach us about FAITH. And this is how the Lord uses the life of Jeremiah and his FAITH in the Lord so that we will not ignore the purpose God designed us for and we will take hold of it and live it out like Jeremiah did - without contingencies and without dependencies on people. We often forget His promise to "deliver" us from any hardship..."for I am with thee to deliver thee" 1:9. We never get passed our fears to even entertain what happens after we go in FAITH and trust in God's plan. Look around you and find individuals that you know have trusted their lives in FAITH to God's plan. Never I have met one that lived in regret, agony, or sorrow. But everyday in corporate America, traveling through airports, I meet men and women who are in agony, tremendous pain, and frustration and they are not walking their journey in FAITH moving towards what the Lord really designed them to do. On a personal level, I lived 7 years believing that I was not valuable, and that I needed to settle for whatever came my way because that is what I deserved. I made many mistakes in my personal and professional life and I believed that I deserved to live in darkness and pain. One day a good friend shared with me, Jeremiah 29:11. She was a friend who believed in me. And I wondered, "What does she see in me?" It was not about me - it was about her FAITH in knowing that the Lord planned me before my parents even knew me, and He has always thought of me as valuable with an impactful purpose in mind specific to me, and she wanted me to understand this and take action to live the unimaginable journey God designed, than the empty one I was on. So, what are you doing today with your design? Are you pursuing God's design? Or are you creating your own? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? For the first time in 33 years, I was able to answer this. I know that the Lord has called me to minister to women in some fashion. I am a huge admirer of what the Lord has done in the lives of Joyce Meyer and Kay Arthur. So this is my first step in answering the Lord's call no my life to share the words He has put in my mouth...just like Jeremiah.