Friday, November 5, 2010

EMMDEV 2010-11-05 [Jeremiah's Journey] Being given words

JER 1:9 Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "Now, I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."
Jeremiah1:9-10

It is an awesome comfort that our loving omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God will help us to speak His words.

In James we read that the tongue is a fire and an untameable beast. We have all had the experience of wishing we could grab our words out of the air and stuff them back into our mouths! Many of us have had days where it's a case of "open mouth, insert foot."

What a comfort it is that God will give us His Words to speak!

Many of us have an idea that speaking God's Words means that we go into some kind of trance and God uses us like a megaphone. If this were the case, then Matthew would sound the same as Luke, Peter and Paul! And yet when we read the writings of these Biblical Authors, we see aspects of their personalities coming through.

God doesn't invade us like a body-snatcher. He whispers His words in us and they grow and become part of us. They become so real, so true, so exciting that we _want_ to speak them and they come out with passion and joy.

While we do acknowledge that the Biblical Authors received a special gift of inspiration when they wrote the scriptures and that our "words from the Lord" will never carry the same authority as Scripture, we _must_ be open to the idea that if we spend time in God's presence and if we place our hearts next to His, there is a good chance that our words and speaking will begin to contain truth from Him...

And this is not only true for preachers!
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Have a great weekend and pray for your pastor that he will speak God's words on Sunday and that you will have the ears to hear!

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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/