Your words were found, and I ate them
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
O LORD, God of hosts.
What an amazing verse, especially when you look at it in context. After delivering all his prophecies of disaster and destruction, Jeremiah is deeply discouraged and pleads to God for help. But in the midst of his discouragement, Jeremiah remembers how precious God's Word still is to him. It's sort of like David, praying out of his discouragement in Psalm 42, "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God." Though the God's Word to Jeremiah is alienating him from his family and his people, yet they are still a joy to his heart.
May this verse be true of me every day. I want God's Word to be my joy and delight; I want to hunger and thirst after God and His righteous Word. But my heart doesn't naturally love what is most lovely, and my fallen tongue doesn't naturally "taste and see the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8, 1 Peter 2:3). I need the Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth, to do this work in me every day. I must pray with the Psalmist, "Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!" "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." I need God to sovereignly, omnipotently bend my stubborn heart to His testimonies, and I need His Spirit to say "Let there be light" to my darkened eyes every morning so that I can see the wondrous things in the Bible. And I have His promise that He will do this: Jeremiah delighted in the Word of God because he was called by God's name. So am I! And so I have the same Spirit and calling that Jeremiah did that enabled him to enjoy God.
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