the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Jeremiah 23:22—If they had stood in my council.... (R.V.)
Here is the cause of so much failure in Christian work—God’s servants do not stand in God’s council. The previous words explain what is meant by not standing in God’s council: "I sent not these prophets, yet they ran; I spake not unto them, yet they prophesied." Alas! these words write our own sentence. Too often we run without being sent, and prophesy because the hour has struck, rather than because the message of God has been given! We do not stand in God’s council.
"But if they had stood."... We gather, therefore, that the stream of prophetic teaching was not limited to Jeremiah alone. There was no necessary exclusiveness in the Divine arrangements. He was chosen, and used as God’s agent and medium, because he stood in his council. And the others might have had the same privilege if they had conformed to the same conditions.
Let us claim the positive assurance of this promise. We see where we have fallen short of God’s ideal, but we can retrace our steps; we can renounce our fussy activities; refrain from the desire to be always to the front; and wait more absolutely on God for his thoughts, and words, and messages. A Christian worker once complained to George Müller that he had not time enough for the study of the Word and prayer; and the veteran saint asked in reply, whether an hour’s less work, with the soul dwelling in the full light of God, and therefore actuated by his impulses, would not be more prosperous and effective than five hours spent under the perpetual fever of our own will and way. Be right with God, and the people shall be caused to hear, and shall be turned.
