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...thou shalt be as my mouth

Jeremiah 15:19 Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.
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Our conduct in life, as Christians, is to be different from the world. We are to be in the world but not of the world. We are to walk away from iniquity (even from vile conversations) and set an example of pure love from a fervent heart for all men (1Pet 1:22).

The world likes to criticize and tear down other people – when they do it builds up their own ego, it fuels their own insecurities, it makes them feel less “bad”... and as Christians, we fall into this negative trap as well! Jeremiah has the Lord tell him, in Jeremiah chapter 15 that to be God’s mouth-piece, we need to do something different than the world. In loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matt 22:39), we should look for the good in people, not the bad. We should try to walk in their shoes (mentally) to attempt to understand their viewpoint that we might be able to minister. We should “take for the precious from the vile” if we desire to allow God to use us to speak His word and His heart to the fallen and broken world.

God has compassion on us, but we are often hard of heart. God has mercy on us, but we usually want justice. God gives us grace where none is deserved and often we can’t even receive of it. God’s heart is that none should perish but all should come to repentance. God loves us so very much that He sent His only Son to the cross to die in our place that we might have the privilege of being with Him in heaven for ever!! If we are to represent Him to the world, if we are to speak for Him to the lost, the broken hearted, the captives – we must see them as He sees them – with His love. We can only do this through the power of His Holy Spirit; it is only through His enabling that we can faithfully find the precious from the vile, the good from the bad, and the diamond in the sewer...

And...we must humbly understand that He started this process of the precious from the vile when He started with us! Until we understand that we need the shed blood on Calvary no less than those we desire to minister to, we will never have God’s heart toward them.

Pray with me that God gives us the heart to always find the precious from the vile...



Email me (Pastor Jim) at pj-brown@sbcglobal.net or visit our website at:www.calvarychapel.com/hcfw

posted by Pastor Jim @ 7:08 AM