The first chapter of Jeremiah does contain a prophecy, but it’s mostly about Jeremiah’s call to the position of prophet.

The Lord had this planned from the beginning, certainly before Jeremiah’s beginning. We could say that Jeremiah began before he came into his mother’s womb. He began as God’s idea. The Lord knew him before He formed him.

The Lord knew from the beginning what Jeremiah was finding out decades later, that God had set him apart. God had set Jeremiah apart for the Lord’s own purposes, prophet to the nations, since before Jeremiah was born.

You were created on purpose and for a purpose. You started as God’s bright idea. If you are a child of God, then God chose you before you were born, from way back at the beginning. He appointed you a boundary of time and space. He chose your gifting, how He would place you within His body for its building up.

Jeremiah isn’t so sure he can fulfill the calling. He makes two excuses. Have you made excuses why you can’t fulfill your calling?

Jeremiah is told that he has been set over nations to pluck up, destroy, overthrow, build, and plant. Those are not things that Jeremiah can do. Those are things that God does. God will be doing the work. Jeremiah’s job is to submit to what God is doing and allow Him to use Jeremiah however He chooses.

Surrender is the goal for all of us. We don’t need to know our calling. We don’t need to understand our gifting. We don’t need to know the action plan. It’s actually not good for us to know the plan because we’ll want to go and carry it out. God wants us reliant on Him because we need to be reliant on Him! All we need is to surrender and trust that He’s got this, that He can figure out how to get you where He wants you and get you doing what He wants you doing.

Jeremiah gets practice with His first vision. God coaches him through it. God knows how to get you where He wants you. Let Him have you. Let Him have His way with you.

There will be things that come against you, but God promises, “They shall not prevail against you, for I am with you.”