“Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book, they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.” [1]
God is so amazing!
God knew our days before there was one of them. Glory to God! We are oblivious to His insights unless we come into His presence in the Name of Jesus His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through whom He reveals His insights to us.
At age thirteen, the Lord gave me a sense that He would send me to China, Africa, or both. I did not want to go. However, later, after the Lord birthed me into His glorious kingdom by His Word and by His Spirit, He sent me to China. I loved it. I did not want to come back.
At age nineteen, as I read the Book of Jeremiah, God called me to serve His Word. He wanted me to speak truth for Him. He wanted me to speak to save my hearers from the destruction that comes to those who die without a relationship with God. [2]
The Lord opened the door for me to preach the Gospel in China, and to make disciples there. Now, I have a ministry in America. My calling, like Jeremiah’s, is to call people to replace distance from God with closeness to Him.
The Lord led me to compose a book entitled, “21st Century Jeremiah” with the goal of bringing Jeremiah’s ministry to 21st Century America in an applicable and relevant fashion. That is why I have set up a blog page entitled 21st Century Jeremiah. That is why I have written about him.
Coincidentally, when I was eighteen, God led me to write my pre-Bible-thoughts down in story form. I filled 121 notebook pages with words a of story entitled “Darkness will Fall on the City.” After I composed this story, the Lord led me to read the book of Jeremiah. Without collaborating my story with Jeremiah’s, I was surprised how closely the theme of my book mirrored his. Like Jeremiah, my crusader’s goal was to restore love for God in a city where the people loved the works of darkness rather than God.
My story related to the Bible in other ways as well. The hero of my story wore body armor. The Lord revealed to me later on about the armor of God in the Bible. [3] I was unfamiliar with the armor of God passage when I wrote the “Darkness Will Fall on the City” story.
The leader in my story had two Christians in his life, They studied the Bible and prayed with him. This was done in his home not in a church. Later on, I led a home group of Christians in China, and the Lord affirmed this style of Church meeting from the Holy Scriptures. [4]
Later, I was in China. By accident, I got off a bus too early and ended up walking to my destination. As I walked, I saw a boarded up church. I stopped and stared. My “Darkness Will Fall on the City” story was about a crusader whose goal was to reopen a boarded-up church. There were no more open churches in his city. That was what I did in China. I opened a place of worship for people to gather in the Name of Jesus in a city where once churches had been condemned and closed, but my goal in China was not to reopen a cathedral, but to win people to Jesus and meet with them wherever possible for discipleship purposes. This technique works in the USA as well. Instead of assembling brick and mortar, we can focus on assembling people who want to know the Lord and make Him known to others.
God wrote our lives in His book before we were born. He knew our days even when none existed. Is that not exciting?
God reveals His purposes and plans for us in the Bible. Expect God to speak to you when read the Bible. The Prophet Daniel wrote, “I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” [5] While reading the prophecy of Jeremiah, God revealed to Daniel what he could not have known otherwise. The Word of God provides the faith we need to fill the gap between we know and what we need to know.
Once, I read a church sign with this saying: “Faith is a journey not a destination.” This is what it means to tabernacle with God! Jesus moved about in the Gospels. He could have built a church building. He was a carpenter’s son. Surely, He knew how to put a building together. But He preferred to put a group of people together who would go anywhere, serve any people, and do the discipleship ministry in whatever venue God graciously supplied for them.
“The days were fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Think of that! God created your days before you existed. Have you ever asked God to reveal His purposes for your life? Have you ever written down the things God has done in your life to see the connections between one event and another? Have you ever asked God to help you sort out what is of Him in your life and what is not? I have learned from the prophets and apostles that God has ample resources and angels to help us fulfill our destinies. Our part is to take time to listen to Him, and then, trust and obey His leading. His grace abundantly provides for us.
[1] Psalm 139:16
[2] Jeremiah 1:4-10
[3] Ephesians 6:10-17
[4] Acts 2:2, 46; 5:42; 12:12; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2
[5] Daniel 9:2
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