Strength and tenderness are complementary virtues, just like might and grace.
Sunday evening I was listening to Ravi Zacharias’ message, Brittle Clay in Tender Hands. This week was just the introduction to this series on Jeremiah, a study of Jeremiah’s call in chapter 1, though the title is taken from chapter 18. Look at the progression. God set Jeremiah apart to be His prophet before Jeremiah was even born. In response to this glorious and sovereign truth God spoke to this man, the pre-prophet informed God, “I cannot speak…” So Jeremiah had to learn two things. The first is that when God calls you, He is strong enough to command your obedience. The second is that when God calls, He is tender enough to equip. He knows our weaknesses. I still remember a friend in high school quoting, “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”
If you study the prophets, when they ran, God pursued them. Writing about Jacob, Michael Card observed, “Love will fight us to be found.” Usually we think of the unsaved when we hear the poem or phrase, “Hound of Heaven.” But in Brittle Clay in Tender Hands, Ravi Zacharias points out that Jeremiah 18 could just as easily illustrate those who have already trusted in God. Whether you’ve considered Jesus’ pursuit in this light before or not, I expect you will be able to remember times in your life, however short, when you would have preferred God not go through with His plans for you, when you resisted like the clay on the Potter’s wheel. And I’m guessing that like Jonah, not even running to the other side of the world rid you of His call.
Corresponding to strength is might. Near the end of Jeremiah 1, God warns the prophet that if he is more afraid of the people and their reaction to the message he is delivering, God will simply make Jeremiah more afraid of Him – in front of the audience. A proper understanding of grace cannot come without a view of God’s might. How holy is He? How glorious? How powerful? Where does that leave us? Aside from leaving us unwilling to reject Him (even for fear of any one else, puny in comparison), it reminds us of how unable we are to obey Him ourselves.
I want to suggest that what happens both in the conviction of the soul’s need for a savior and in the pursuit of His children, is a grace chase. To abide in His will is better for us. Grace prevents God from giving us up to our own wisdom, and from releasing His just wrath upon us. Instead, He tenderly paces after us. Sometimes the tenderness is so filled with strength that we know we are experiencing discipline. For example, some mornings I turn off my alarm and want so much to get more sleep that I do drift off into a shallow sleep, and as much as part of me wanted to get more rest, I’m grateful when God wakes me back up just in time so that I won’t be late. Likewise I am so glad that He doesn’t let me wander from Him forever.
Once we His servants are apprehended in the chase, we are also given grace to complete “that for which [we are] apprehended of Christ Jesus.” Jeremiah professed his inability to speak, and once God had a hold of him, having cast aside the excuses, God graced Jeremiah with the ability to speak in God’s strength God’s own words. The question was never one of Jeremiah’s ability.
The more I seek God for understanding, the more I think I’m catching on. I’ve been asking what “disciplined by grace” means, and I think this is another answer.
Paul wrote one of God’s messages to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
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Lisa of Longbourn 