Don't say, I am a child
The call of Jeremiah
The word of the LORD breaks into a young man's settled life, and it does not ease in gently. Before you were born, God says, I knew you; I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. It is a staggering thing to be handed, and Jeremiah does what almost all of us do when the call outruns our sense of ourselves. He reaches for the nearest excuse. Ah, Lord GOD, he says, I cannot speak, for I am only a child. It is not false modesty; he means it. He is too young, untried, unready, and he holds his disqualification up like a shield. God brushes it aside on the spot. Do not say, I am a child. To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. And then, knowing the real fear underneath the excuse, He adds the only assurance that actually matters: do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you. The break does not wait for Jeremiah to feel ready. It rests on a different ground entirely — not the prophet's competence, but God's presence.
“Don't say, I am a child; for to whoever I shall send you, you shall go, and whatever I shall command you, you shall speak.”
— The LORD, to Jeremiah — Jeremiah 1:7 (WEB)
“Don't be afraid because of them; for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
Disconnect often comes to the reluctant, and it does not honor our excuses. This phase asks you to stop hiding behind your disqualification and to move on different ground entirely — not your readiness, which may never arrive, but God's promise to be with you. The excuse is rarely accepted; the presence is always given.
When God calls you out of the familiar, you will reach for your disqualification, and you will have a real one ready. Too young or too old, too broken, too compromised, too untrained, too tired, too late. The excuse is not always a lie; Jeremiah really was young. But notice that God does not argue you into feeling adequate. He does not list Jeremiah's hidden talents or promise that he will grow into the role and feel confident soon. He simply overrides the excuse with a presence. The readiness the call requires was never your readiness; it was His being with you. This is bracing and it is freeing at once. Bracing, because it means you do not get to wait until you feel equal to the thing before you obey it — that day may never come. Freeing, because the weight you thought rested on your competence was never yours to carry. The break comes to the reluctant and the unready, and the only qualification it asks for is the One who promises to go along.
God keeps raising up renewers of His Church who feel wholly unequal to the rupture they are handed. The Body's great breaks have rarely come through the credentialed and the confident; they have come through reluctant people, a stammering monk, an obscure preacher, a band of nobodies, who said in effect, I am only a child, and then went anyway, because the One who sent them had promised to go with them. The pattern holds for the Church in every age, including our own anxious one, where the institutions feel too weakened and the moment too daunting for any great commission. But the call has never rested on the Body's adequacy. It rests on the presence promised to it: I am with you to deliver you.
What cannot be shaken is the presence promised to the called: I am with you to deliver you. Your competence can fail and your courage can drain away, but the assurance underneath the call does not move. He goes with the ones He sends.
- What disqualification am I holding up like a shield when God calls me out?
- Have I been waiting to feel ready, on ground that may never grow firm?
- Can I move on His promise to be with me rather than on my own sense of competence?
Lord, when You call me I reach for every reason I am not the one. I am too young, too small, too unready. Do not let me hide there. Steady me on the only ground that holds: that You are with me to deliver me. I will go because You go with me. Amen.