Boldly Real

Correct me, LORD, but only with justice--not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing.
~Jeremiah 10:24

I really appreciate Jeremiah's relationship with the Lord. Every time I run across one of his interactions with God, I almost have to laugh! Jeremiah would have been somebody who gets my life! God asked him to do a lot of stuff that other people just didn't get, and he did it for God--and then turned around and blamed Him for it. He knew what it was like to suffer for God, and to be honest about the fact that he didn't want to suffer, and that he *was* suffering. He wasn't looking for life lessons in the places God put him. God had made Jeremiah's whole life a picture of His plan.

I appreciate Jeremiah's reality with God. His heartcry often echoes mine, right down to the "I tried not to speak, but the words burned within me and I had to" because God had so overwhelmed him that he could not resist.

His plea in the above verse has encouraged me for several days, because I know that so often I am not in the right about something--yet God has always been very gentle in His correction of me. I have learned that His conviction is never condemning, because He remembers that I am dust. It is not His intent to reduce me to nothing. It gives me courage to be who I am before Him.

After all, it's not like He doesn't know my heart anyway!