When Jeremiah Wanted to Quit Preaching

by Terry Wane Benton

It wasn’t just mental fatigue and having to deal with obnoxious attitudes, but having to constantly deal with brethren undermining him and working against him, some even looking for ways to get rid of him for good! It got to where he dreaded preaching the needed message of repentance. It was a negative message God called him to preach because the nation had drifted so far that doom was their future. They laughed him off, saying, “Violence and plunder” is all he ever says (Jeremiah 20:8). Jeremiah wanted just to quit. He said, “I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name.”

I’ve been there a few times. Sometimes it seems useless because people don’t seem to listen and appreciate your efforts to save their souls. You feel pretty lonely when you ought to feel appreciated and loved. Jeremiah was feeling very unloved, except for God!

When a man truly understands the word's significance, truth, wonder, and power, he can’t always just suppress it. Jeremiah tried but the word was in his heart, and when it is in the heart it is “like a burning fire shut up in the bones”, and you get tired of holding it in (Jeremiah 20:9). Jeremiah tried to quit, but his message was too important, too needed, too powerful to suppress. He could no longer watch the light go out when such a message was desperately needed.

We need more Jeremiahs who can’t hold back from preaching the most needed message that still lives and abides for the saving of souls. We don’t need people who can preach or not, but people who can’t keep themselves from it.

Do you understand what Jeremiah was feeling? Do you feel that same way?