Don’t Say That

There is a moment in Jeremiah 1 that I cannot stop thinking about. God speaks to

Jeremiah, calls him, assigns him, and Jeremiah’s response is immediate “Ah, Lord God!

Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” And before he can settle into

that identity, before that label can take root, God cuts it off. ‘“Do not say,I am only a

youth.” Not, that is not true. Not, let me explain why you are wrong. Just: don’t say that.

Stop speaking it. Because God was not willing to let Jeremiah define himself into a

smaller life than the one he had been called to.

And I wonder how many times God has said the same thing to us, and we kept talking

anyway.

We do this in ways we don’t even recognize as limiting. Sometimes it is the obvious

things I’m just not smart enough, I’m not qualified, I’m not the type of person who does

things like that. But sometimes it is subtler than that. Sometimes it sounds like this is

just how I’m wired or I’ve always been this way or leadership has never really been my

thing. We say it so casually, so matter-of-factly, as though we are simply stating the

truth about ourselves. But what if some of the things we have accepted as facts about

who we are, God is looking at and saying don’t say that? Jeremiah was not lying. He was

young. He had never done this before. The facts were not wrong. But God was not

working with Jeremiah’s facts. He was working with a version of Jeremiah that

Jeremiah hadn’t met yet. And that is the thing about God; He sees the finished version

of you while you are still introducing yourself as the rough draft.

Jeremiah is not alone in this. Moses at the burning bush. Gideon under the tree calling

himself the least of his father’s house. Isaiah undone by his own unworthiness. Again

and again, God encounters someone who has a full explanation for why they are the

wrong person, and again and again, He is unbothered by it. Because He is not calling

who you have been. He is calling who you are becoming. So what are you saying about

yourself today that God is asking you to stop saying? What labels have you worn so long

they feel like skin? What ceilings have you built out of your own words? In this season, I

want to challenge you to pay attention to how you introduce yourself, not just to others,

but to yourself. Because we are not who we think we are. We are who He says we are.

And He has not once called you just anything, you are called.