Leading When No One Is Following - Live Loved

Jeremiah’s Leadership When No One Followed

I was two hours away from home when I lived on my own in my college apartment. I walked to my apartment from a big interview, the kind you put high heels and bright lipstick on for. The interview was for a leadership position for a prominent club on campus, granting me everything I longed for at the time – to have new friends and not spend another Friday alone watching Fox 13. My heart was full of hope and longing for the opportunities I knew that position would give me.

The smell of noodles and rubbery chicken greeted me at the door, and I walked to my room to find the comfort of my little sanctuary, my home away from home. While most college freshmen wanted new bedside tables and wall décor, I wanted everything to be the same. Watercolor drawings my sister painted me throughout the years were the oxygen I clung to when anxiety of change crippled me.

The Rejection I Did Not Expect

I received the email a few days later that I did not move forward to get the position. The hope I clung to for things to finally get better lay crippled in despair. I sought independence in moving here; but now, I felt life was no longer fair. I wondered why I was here, two hours away, in the middle of where I felt God calling me to make a change but feeling like it was not a good change.

The present has a way of revealing truths about the past that you cannot see at the time. Now, I praise God I did not receive all the places I put my hope and security into! Every attempt of worldly success brought me closer to find that while my heart longed to chase after opportunities and success, God really just wanted my heart to chase after Him.

Trading the joyful laughter of a house filled with family for a quiet apartment that smelled like burnt noodles taught me endurance in the hard times means seeking reflective time. What I still mark as my hardest season endured is a time where I see more of God’s blessings as He tuned my heart to be more in line with His Word than the world. The quiet stillness that came from a reflective awakening of time with God helped me listen to His whispered teachings over my heart.

God’s Calling to Jeremiah

Jeremiah was not a stranger to the quiet moments brought by rejection. He was a prophet speaking God’s truth over the falling nation of Judah. In other words, the people would soon be slaves to another kingdom because they turned from their ways of following God. The land once flowing with the richness of milk and honey, the fullness of God’s blessings, was now spiritually barren – dried because of neglected discipline to nurture God’s gift.

This displacement of God’s gift meant finding hope in their own success and fulfillment in their indulgences. The Jesus Bible says, “God had willingly bound himself to these people in covenant love, and the people were expected to respond with worshipful obedience. But they did not.”

Jeremiah’s Obedience

God commanded Jeremiah to bring prophetic messages of warning to the fallen nation. The problem with prophetic messages is that they are messages of what has not happened yet. Therefore, people of habit are less likely to care about dangers of the future when they are captured by the comfort of the present.

I do not believe bringing the difficult truth to people who only wanted messages that would make them feel good was not any different from our struggle now. We are blind to our destructive habits and crave self-satisfaction, making it easy to ignore truths in God’s Word. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations,” Jeremiah 1:5. God knew the difficulty Jeremiah would have reaching the people before He ever called Jeremiah to teach.

Jeremiah could have asked questions drenched in heart-wrenching doubt of God’s goodness. He did reason with God that he was only a youth (1:6). He could have struggled in uncertainty, wondering if he was doing as he was called. He even could have decided to quit because no one was listening, and the world was turning more and more against God.

As I read Jeremiah’s story, I draw my own questions had I been in his position:

If no one listens, then what is my purpose?
If no one agrees with me, then where am I accepted?
If little change results, then what is my reason for doing this?

“If this, why that” statements cause me to twist the very situations God calls me to use for His good and see them as a failure to meet my expectations. False belief is the ultimate twisting of God’s goodness into questioning the goodness of where He has placed me. “I the lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds,” Jeremiah 17:10.

Too many times I mistakenly equate God’s calling for me to be obedient with my expectation of worldly success. But God doesn’t measure success the way I do. Instead, He examines the intentions of my heart.

Filling our Hearts with God’s Truth

The rejection of our heart’s desire can be the very place we see our need for the One who created our hearts. Our disappointment can look like failure of expectations of when we would be married while we slip into another bridesmaid dress; the disappointment of failed friendships after years of growing up together and then drifting away; or the rejection of a career we wished we had while we toil in qualities we were not gifted with.

Four Truths We Can Cling To:

The fulfillment of my purpose is dependent on God’s power to move, not my ability to move things for Him.
My weakest moments of insecurity are God’s greatest moments to show us His security.
The limitations of my abilities can help me see the power of God’s sovereignty.
The defeats I experience on earth will result in heavenly victory as God fights for and with us.

Every time and season has a purpose in the Kingdom. God will build His kingdom – are you willing to be a part of it even when no one is listening, and even when you don’t see immediate results?

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Often, I mistake God’s good for my good. Surely, if I love Him and follow Him, it will work out for my good. But this “good” that is being mentioned is rooted in a soul fully following God’s direction and desires – not our own.

God’s good for Jeremiah was to warn the people of His coming judgment so that they could turn and follow HIM. Though the people did not seem to listen, Jeremiah continued to preach it. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord…” Jeremiah 17:7

Our ultimate mission as Christ-followers is to tell others about Him even if no one follows and no one listens. Sadie Robertson Huff once said, “When everyone turns to other gods, and they are, stay steadfast. ‘As for me and my house we will serve the Lord’ [Joshua 24:15].”

God, give us the boldness to speak for you even when the world does not listen.

God’s Calling For Us

God calls me to be brave and to do brave things. Those brave things require humbling recognition to serve where I am, doing what I am called to with where He has me placed.

We can step in faith to do brave things to follow Jesus without needing big results. He desires our hearts not our earthly success. God, your blessings go far beyond the little ways of seeing You. I see You in the big ways I get to know you when no one is following, and no one is watching.

Your good is my good, and I know you work all things for Your Kingdom good (Romans 8:28).