Jeremiah 20:9: “Then I said, I will not make mention of him nor speak anymore in his name.  But his word was in my heart as a burning fire and shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forebearing and I could not stay.”

“One half of mine is yours, the other half yours, mine own I would say; but if mine, then yours and so all yours.”  William Shakespeare

“I hold it true, whate’er befalls, I feel it when I sorrow most; tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

We are familiar with Jeremiah. He faithfully preached an unpopular message. He preached a message people did not want to hear and as a result he was persecuted to the point of being thrown into prison. It is while sitting in this prison that he makes his complaint known unto the Lord.  He has grown tired of always having to preach an unpopular message and being rewarded with persecution.  He seems to be pretty upset with God.  He even said he had decided not to make mention of him. Actually, the word for mention is zacar which means remembrance. Literally what he was saying was: I will not be mindful of him. He was just going to forget about God and go his merry way, like bringing a bad romance to an end.

The next sentence says; But his word was in my heart like a burning fire. Actually word is not found in the Hebrew text of this passage.  It is put there by translators as it seems to be the intent of the passage. Yet, literally the passage reads, He was in my heart like a burning or all-consuming fire. A consuming fire is an ancient Semitic metaphor for passion. God was the passion of Jeremiah’s heart. So to forget God would be to ignore the passion of his heart, and that cannot be done.

What Jeremiah is talking about is a battle we all face. On the outside things are going horrible. We face financial pressures, health pressures, etc.  We are praying and praying and things get worse. You are forced to listen to testimonies from people with good jobs tell how God gave them a promotion where they could get their house remodeled while you can’t even find a job and pay your mortgage. You reach the point where you have had it.  Everyone else gets a miracle but you don’t, everyone else hears from God but you don’t.  You shout out to God: “Ok, you want to bless others with a steak while all I get is a crumb of bread, then fine, see what I care, go ahead and keep blessing everyone else and ignore me. I don’t care, I will just go about my business and pay you no mind.” Basically that is what Jeremiah was praying.  All these false prophets were prophesying pretty and beautiful things and were being rewarded and praised for their wonderful prophecies while old Jeremiah preaches what God had put in his heart and he ends up in prison.

Yet, when we take that attitude we discover like Jeremiah discovered, it comes into direct conflict with our hearts. When our hearts have been filled with a passion for God, a conflict over our love for God and the conflicts and tribulations of this world soon collide.

Like Jeremiah we want to just forget about the name of God when He seems unresponsive to our pleas for help, but instantly our hearts rise up against such thoughts because He is our passion, our life and our love. We gave him our lives, not just half but the whole. It is His choice if He chooses to mold us into a vessel of honorable use or a vessel of dishonorable use.

But human as we are, like Jeremiah, there may often rage a battle between the mind and the heart. If we have given Him all our hearts, then despite the storm that rages on the outside, the passion of our hearts will win out as Jeremiah discovered and you will just grow weary with forebearing. In the Hebrew that word forebearing is kaleka which means to grow weary with trying to endure and the word weary is nile’iti which is in a Niphal form and comes from the root word leah. This is a curious combination of words and has the idea of laboring in vain and being sustaining despite the labor.  What Jeremiah is saying is that the love of God is such a passion in His heart and as much as he would like to forget about God, His passion is what sustains him and he cannot forget about it.

Times we grow so weary with trying to endure that we just need to give ourselves over to the passion of our hearts and let God reign and do what He wants to do. This is what Lord Tennyson was saying when he suffered a loss. The pain was so great but soon he realized to have just loved God was better than to never have loved Him at all. Even if God does not do what he wants Him to do.  What Jeremiah realized was that despite all the suffering and loss that came from being filled with the passionate love of God, it was still worth it, to have known the passionate love of God.  As the Apostle Paul said, “As it is written: ‘for your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:36-39.

The Apostle Paul knew what it was like to lose everything, he could not give a testimony of how he became rich when he found Jesus, instead he became poor, relationships were not re-established, he lost many friends, his reputation was destroyed and he became a wanted man and knew what it was like to be in prison for his Love for Jesus.  Yet, like Jeremiah he discovered it was better to have loved and lost everything this world had to offer, than never to have loved God at all for he knew nothing could separate him from that love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.