IT'S HARD to imagine a man less qualified to speak the word of God. To begin with, he didn't want the job and tried every excuse to get out of it. Then after accepting the call, he struggled with anxiety and resentment about his assigned career. On top of that, his tendency toward emotional outbursts earned him the moniker the "weeping prophet."
Some might consider such a man far from suitable for prophetic office. Yet God called Jeremiah anyway—apparently acknowledging something beyond his human capacities and behavior. Jeremiah showed up for work, too, despite all his protests. And he turned out to be one of the most successful of all the prophets of Israel, because he couldn't rely on great personal strength of character but was forced instead to trust the unchanging and absolutely reliable strength of God.
Clearly, Jeremiah's example shows that there's a lot more to success than being humanly perfect or "having it all together." In fact, perfection as Jesus taught it has nothing to do with admirable conduct or outstanding achievement. It isn't a human condition to be won. It's a God-given spiritual quality that each of us can claim as our own—not in the future, but here and now—because it's a fact of our existence as the expression of a perfect God.
