Daily EncouragementSample

This is a word from the Lord, through Jeremiah, to Baruch. He is not the first secretary in the Lord’s work to complain, “I am worn out . . . and find no rest” (verse 3)! It must have been no easy task to be Jeremiah’s fellow-worker. Quite apart from everything else, the giants in God’s work are not always the easiest of people to live with. The “everything else” included sharing in the prophet’s trials and finally in his forced exile in Egypt (verses 36:18; 43:6-7). There was little room left for the fulfillment of his own private desires. Hence this warning not to seek great things for himself. To embrace the service of God with all his heart meant saying goodbye to personal ambition. It was so then, and it is so now. We may be surprised that a man of Baruch’s caliber needed this message, but there are few who don’t. “I have no one else like him,” says Paul about Timothy, “For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 2:20-21). To lose one’s life for the Lord’s sake is to find it (Matt. 10:39). So Baruch found the hand of God upon him wherever he went, and his life was fulfilled in a way beyond his imagining. Where would Jeremiah be - where would we be - without him?