WHEN THE TRUTH BURNS IN YOUR HEART

 

I love words. I love words like some people love numbers. It’s an unusual love, I know. It’s unusual when the Dictionary is one of your pals….

 

As I started my study of Jeremiah this year it was immediately confirmed to me why he is one of the two prophets of my heart. Being called to preach, as a youth, to a people whose ‘day of grace was past with them’, much like Mormon in his day (Mormon 2:15), Jeremiah was understandably relucant. The Lord not only assured him by telling him of his greatness and his foreordination before he was even born (Jeremiah 1:5), He touched his mouth with his hand and told him he has put His ‘words’ in his mouth to ‘root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant’ (v10). Imagine the power of every word that would come out of Jeremiah’s mouth from then on…...but you wouldn’t imagine this: Jeremiah did not cease striving to save his people begging them in vain, for 40 years, to turn back to God and avert the Babylonian captivity. During that time Jeremiah was in a state of continuous suffering as he was accused of political treason, put in stocks, thrown in prison, persecuted, hunted by men of his home town who sought to kill him and so angered the elders of the Jews because his prophecies came true that they cast him into a dungeon called 'a pit prison', being lowered into it with cords through a hole in the top, where Jeremiah sank in the mire (Jeremiah 38:6).  At the height of his persecutions and suffering Jeremiah was tempted to cease preaching but he could not restrain himself because ‘His WORD was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay’ (Jeremiah 20:9). Jeremiah’s mission makes for captivating reading. 

 

May we, when the truth burns within us, speak and be heard in this world where men call ‘good evil and evil good’ (Isaiah 5:20; 2 Nephi 15:20). May we have the courage and more importantly, ask the God of Heaven to put His words in our mouth that we may be the force for good and be vessels in His hands of saving souls from destruction that is imminent.

 

I will spread the word

Your gift of salvation to honour

And satisfy man’s hidden hunger;

I will help them know

Your arms are their shelter,

Your heart is their home,

Their only hope

For protection from the storm.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Judah by Rembrandt)