Promises from the Book of Jeremiah - When Life Is Hard, God Still Keeps His Promises - Episode #181

Well, hey there! Welcome to the latest episode of The Burt (Not Ernie) Show. I’m Jan, and if we have never met in real life or on the interwebs, it’s so nice to “meet” you! 

Let’s take a look at some promises God offers His people in the book of Jeremiah.

Episode #181 is sponsored by JoannaWeaverBooks.com

How can I pray for you?

 

You’re listening to The Burt (Not Ernie) Show, part of the Spark Network, now playing in the Edifi app. Today’s episode is sponsored by the author and speaker Joanna Weaver. You may know her from the bestseller Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. Her words resonate with so many Christian women, and I am currently working through her book Lazarus Awakening. Thanks, Joanna, for writing what I’ve needed to hear so many times. I’ll share a link to Joanna Weaver’s website here in the show notes. This is episode number 181.

 

Jeremiah. The weeping prophet. His calling from the Lord was far from easy. In fact, it was downright brutal in many aspects. This is a man who lived a rough life for all the years he walked in obedience to God. And so, we can take comfort in his words when we feel like things go from bad to worse when we do what God told us to do. And in the midst of so much hardship, we find some amazing promises in the book of Jeremiah.

 

Jeremiah 17, verses 7 and 8 from the NLT say this:

But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.

They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.

 

Isn’t this passage remarkable? It reminds me very much of Psalm 1. The promise here for you is that you will be blessed so long as you trust in the Lord and make Him your hope and confidence. Listen, the honest truth is that we can feel like we’re trusting Him but when pressed a bit regarding whether or not any and all of our confidence is in the Lord alone, well, hmmm… it’s not always placed fully there, is it? And it needs to be. There is nobody that will fail to let you down save One, and His name is the Lord. So put your hope in Him, put all your confidence in Him, and you will be blessed. That’s the promise here, and God never fails to do what He has promised.

You will be like a tree planted along a riverbank, your roots are gonna go deep into the water and you will not have to feel barren and dry and fruitless and useless and pointless even when the whole world around you is in a season of drought. Your leaves will stay green and you will never stop producing fruit.

Does that describe you right now?

You know, one of the best ways to examine your life, to examine yourself to see if ye be in the faith, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13:5, is to take a look at your life’s fruit, or lack thereof. 

If you have no fruit, meaning the kind of stuff that marks you as a Christian, that is different than the ways of the world, that is evidence that Jesus has hold of your heart and is doing a sanctifying, transforming work in you and through you…that kind of fruit, well if it isn’t evident in your life, then I’m going to be bold enough to say that you may not be planted firmly in the Lord, may not be fully trusting in Him alone. And if you’re not, can I encourage you to change that today? Walking with Jesus is not about saying a prayer one time during an emotional moment at the end of a three day conference. Climate controlled settings with emotional speakers and worship can be awesome, there is not doubt, but they don’t always equate to the kind of transformative life change that Jesus is really after in the lives of each of His disciples. If we are going to see the kind of fruit that points to us belonging to Him, we need to make a decision to take up our cross daily and follow Him, and that goes far beyond the women’s event and stretches into every nook and cranny of our life. 

 

Jeremiah 33:3 is another verse I’d like to share with you today, and I actually mentioned this verse on episode number 33 of my other podcast, The Prayer Podcast with Jan L. Burt and I can drop a link to that episode in the show notes for you to easily listen to if you’re interested. Let me read it from the NLT. 

I’ll start in verse 2 and then read verse 3:

This is what the LORD says - the LORD who made the earth, who formed and established it, whose name is the LORD. Ask Me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come. 

 

Yeah, that right there is a big deal. It’s a huge promise. Ask Him, call to Him some versions say, and ask Him things you don’t know. Ask Him and He will tell you secrets that are remarkable about what? About things you don’t know, about things to come. This tells us that we aren’t on our own, we don’t have to figure it all out by our own selves, and beyond that, we can ask Him to tell us secret things about what is to come and He will do it. Isn’t that amazing? Like, how is that even possible, that we can ask and God will tell us things like that? Oh it’s amazing all right, and God means what He promises here. We aren’t walking into an unknown, uncertain future in the same manner as those who don’t follow Jesus…and this verse gives us tremendous hope and comfort that God will show us things, remarkable things, secret things, if we will but ask Him. Our future is not unknown - it is safe in the hands of the God who knows us and we can keep expecting Him to show us things about the future if we will just ask. Yup, this is an awesome promise!

 

The last verse we will look at in Jeremiah is from chapter 10, verse 23, still reading from the NLT.

 

This section of chapter ten has the header “Jeremiah’s Prayer” and verse 23 says:

I know, LORD, that our lives are not our own. We are not able to plan our own course. And verse 24 says:

So correct me, LORD, but please be gentle. Do not correct me in anger, for I would die.

 

I love this. To begin a prayer by saying that we know our lives are not our own, that we are not able to plan our own course, is a huge admission that we all need to make! God already knows this is true; we need to know it! And as a Christian woman in America in 2024, it’s not common to our western culture, this kind of admittance. 

We DON’T know that our lives are not our own. We really have been taught to drink the Kool-Aid and believe the untruth that we can plan our own course. Actually, according to the very Word of God, we cannot! 

The promise here for you and for me is that this acknowledging brings with it so much comfort and peace, because we put our lives where they belong…in His hands. Honestly, we don’t want them anywhere else. And Jeremiah goes on to pray, so correct me Lord, but please be gentle. If God corrected us, dealt with us in His anger, none of us would be alive. Instant death. Poof. That’s it. Time to punch out. But of course, our loving God in His grace and mercy doesn’t deal with us in His anger! He gentleness is known to all, if we take the time to notice it. 

But in praying these words, asking God to move in our lives, to do His sanctifying work, which does at times, often times for me, involve correction, is a really amazing way to ask God to do His will, but in a way that is gentle. He does remember that we are but dust, it says in Psalm 103, and in His gentleness toward us, we see evidence of how much He loves us. 

 

Take comfort in this!

God’s love and care for you knows no bounds, and He will finish the work He has begun in your life.

I hope these verses from Jeremiah have been encouraging for you today, and if so, well, praise the Lord!

 

Lord bless you and thanks for listening today - also, I’m leaving a link in the show notes where you can send me any prayer requests you may have, and I pray for every request I receive. I’ll see you next time! Bye bye.