…And in the dungeon or cistern pit there was no water, but only mire, and Jeremiah sank in the mire. – Jeremiah 38:6, Amplified Bible, AMP

We have a bad habit of thinking that if we are obedient to The Lord, life will be easy. Such thinking isn’t rooted in reality, however.  Bad things happen to obedient people all of the time. Nowhere in Scripture does God promise an easy life. What He does promise is that He will be with His obedient children to deliver them out of their troubles.

When we are introduced to the prophet in Jeremiah chapter 1, God admonishes the young lad in verse 8 to:

Be not afraid of them [their faces], for I am with you to deliver you, says The Lord.

After receiving this promise, Jeremiah suffered plenty of trouble, and perhaps the most miserable example of this was his lovely stay at the Muck and Mire Hotel of Jeremiah 38:6. Having done nothing but deliver a God-given message of repentance to His people, Jeremiah was repaid by his peers with a visit to a dungeon full of mud, mold, and misery. But whereas the princes meant to kill Jeremiah for his message, God was faithful to His promise of Jeremiah 1:8 and rescued His servant through the obedience of Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch in the service of King Zedekiah.

God may allow life to be great when we are obedient, or He may allow life to be awful. But, since our purpose in life is not to find ease and happiness but rather to bring pleasure to God, we need to be open to the fact that our ability to bring pleasure to God may necessitate that we live through horrible circumstances. Nothing brings more pleasure to God than to see sinners saved and disobedient children repent, and it may take a trip to the miry pit for us to help someone understand his or her desperate need for repentance.  If we obediently suffer trouble temporarily on Earth so that someone can escape the flames of Hell forever, we ought to thank The Lord for the opportunity to be used of Him in such a magnificent work.

Of course, it is hard to be thankful for pain when we are in the midst of it.  But if we can stay the course, God will use us to bring many souls to Himself, and pretty soon, we’ll enjoy that promised deliverance to boot.

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