The summer of 2008 was a big summer for me. I was in between my junior and senior years of high school. Over that summer I made a lot of great memories and also felt like I came out with a much clearer sense of who I was and who God was calling me to be. A large part of that was reading through the book of Jeremiah chapter by chapter. At seventeen years old I was beginning to feel God tugging on me. A few people in my life had planted the idea of leadership—specifically, ministry—in my head. I was pretty skeptical about that being a good idea for me. Jeremiah seemed pretty skeptical about God making him a prophet. I could relate to Jeremiah's doubts and questions and even complaints about God's calling on his life. Jeremiah felt too young, too unqualified, like I did. But God reassured the prophet: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Those words were extremely comforting to me as well. I felt like God was answering my concerns and promising that He would be with me. Reading Jeremiah's words gave me hope that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't crazy, that God use me as a minister.
After Jeremiah made such an impact on me I decided that if I ever had a son, I would name him Jeremiah. This was more than a year before I met Tess, almost nine years before we had children, and basically fifteen full years before we had a son. But as I was starting to figure out back in 2008, God was calling me into pastoral ministry. So Jeremiah Hofman's name has special meaning to me. It's an ongoing reminder of what God has done in my life.
Grace and peace,
BMH
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