I have spoken to you again and again,
but you have not listened.
—Jeremiah 25:3
This morning I wrote down the names of five ministers who have been with one church for fifty years or more. Each has experienced times of discouragement, considered moving, or resigning ministry altogether.
God said of Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jer 1:5).
Jeremiah, dubbed “the weeping prophet,” must have questioned that prenatal calling at times. He once said to his church: “For twenty-three years . . . I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened” (Jer 25:3).
His ministry spanned forty years, overlapping the reigns of five kings of Judah and the nation’s fall to Babylonian captivity. Despite a lifetime of discouragement and rejection, he refused to quit.
Whatever your calling as a Christian, don’t quit.
God doesn’t call you to success;
only to faithfulness.