“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And, before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.'”
– Jeremiah 1:4–5
There’s so much in these verses in this opening chapter in Jeremiah. I want you to see just a simple, clear, picture, be reminded of this reality today. Obviously, God is speaking specifically to Jeremiah here about God’s work in Jeremiah’s life. But, there is a truth on display here that should blow us away.
God’s Love for Every Single Life
Before we were formed in the womb, we were known by God. We praise you for your love for us and help us to show this love for every single life in the world.
God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Meaning, I’ve known you before there was a you to be known by anyone else. Before you were in the womb, before I even began to form you there, I knew you. Knew you, who you are, what you would do. Before you were born, I consecrated you. The picture here is God saying, “I set you apart, Jeremiah.” That’s a picture of God’s grace and God’s mercy. Jeremiah had done nothing to deserve that. He wasn’t even there, and God had set him apart, before he was even born, before he had breathed a breath in this world, God had set him apart.
Jeremiah 1:4–5 Praises God’s Grace and Love for His People
I just think, I just think about God’s grace and God’s mercy, and God’s power, and God’s glory, on display here. You just think about. One, the fact that God forms in the womb. This is so overwhelming when you think about abortion. God forms in the womb. God gives life to a child. He knows that child. God loves that child. He is intricately crafting that child. To think that, in our sinfulness, we take this forming, crafting, wonderful work, that God is doing and destroy it.
Help us. God help us. God, please, bring an end to abortion in the country I live in, in this world we live in. We pray you help us to see the value of a child that you’re forming in the womb, that you know before they’re even being formed in the womb.
God, we pray, we pray for women who are wondering whether or not to have a child. God, please, please, give them grace, courage, strength, everything they need to have this child, to give life to this child. To the extent which they’re not able to care for that child, please, oh God, use us, use your church. Please raise up your church to care for the fatherless, the motherless, those who parents are not able, for whatever reason, to care for them. God, please, please, please, cause your church to have a culture of adoption, and foster care, and care, for vulnerable children, and women who are wondering whether or not to have their baby. God, please, please.
Jeremiah 1:4–5 Prays for God’s Love to Be on Display in Our Lives
In all of this, in all of this, help us to feel the wonder and the weight of the fact that, before we were in a womb, you knew us. Before you were forming us, you cared for us. God, what an awesome thought, as I think about my own life. I pray that as others think about this, they would be overwhelmed by your personal care for them. We know from the rest of your word your desire for our salvation, your desire for a relationship with us that lasts forever.
God, we praise you. We praise you for your individual, personal, love for us, evident in your knowledge of us before we were formed in a womb, and evident in the way you formed us, in the way you’ve created us, fearfully and wonderfully made. God, we praise you for this reality in our own lives and we pray that you would help us to show this love for every single life that you know that is being formed in the womb. In Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
