Run with Prayer

and save¡KGod feels our pains, but he does not indulge our self-pity.

This part of prayer goes back to what we looked at the very first week in our study of Jeremiah. If I want to run with the horses, I need to get my focus off of self and get it on God. Prayer, especially the honest kind of prayer we see from Jeremiah, helps me to do that. By laying out my feelings honestly before God, I begin to understand that God understands those feelings, but he also wants me to move beyond them.

3. REFLECT ¡V EXAMINE MY FOUNDATIONS

¡Kif you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be my spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.
Jeremiah 15:19 (NIV)

Jeremiah was understandably discouraged. By this time, had probably been preaching God¡¦s word for about 20 years ¡V with no visible results. Jeremiah had to be tempted to just how in the towel. Why not just preach what the people wanted to hear? Why go through the pain and misery of being faithful to God?

But in prayer, God leads us to re-examine our priorities, to go back to those foundations he has established for our lives.

Several hundred years later, a young preacher named Timothy faced a very similar situation:

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
2 Timothy 4:3-5 (NIV)

The setting of priorities in my life is not a one-time act. I must constantly go to God in prayer so that he can speak to my heart and reaffirm his priorities for my life.

4. RENEW ¡V EXPERIENCE GOD¡¦S FAITHFULNESS

I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you," declares the LORD. "I will save you from the hands of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel."
Jeremiah 15:20-21 (NIV)

We saw last week that Jeremiah had already heard some words very similar to these as a youth. In Jeremiah 1:18-19, God had promised to make Jeremiah a ¡§fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall¡¨ Twenty years later, Jeremiah needs to hear that those words are still true. He needs to know that even though his circumstances have changed, God hasn¡¦t changed.

Eugene Peterson:
Prayer is not so much the place where we learn something new, but where God confirms anew the faith to which we are committed.