Introduction: God’s Protection vs. Mine
As I read Jeremiah 1:5,18 I became curious about how God protects. I found my definition of protection and God’s definition of protection were two different things.
I Said:
Jeremiah 1:8 – God says He will protect Jeremiah. Didn’t Jeremiah get thrown in jail? My definition and God’s definition of protection may be two different things.
Claude Said:
When we read “I will protect you” we picture comfort, safety, open doors, smooth paths. And then Jeremiah gets thrown in a cistern, mocked, called a traitor, imprisoned, and watched everything he warned about actually happen.
Some protection, right?
But here’s what’s interesting, Jeremiah survived. Every single threat against his life failed. The cistern didn’t kill him. The prison didn’t silence him. The kings who wanted him dead died, and Jeremiah kept speaking. God’s definition of protection wasn’t “nothing bad will happen to you.” It was “nothing will stop what I’m doing through you.”
That’s a completely different promise.
It makes me wonder, when God says I will protect you, is He protecting us or protecting the work He put in us? Maybe those aren’t always the same thing. Jeremiah suffered enormously. But the words God gave him are still speaking thousands of years later.
There’s also something in Jeremiah 1:5 worth sitting with, God says before I formed you in the womb I knew you. The protection is almost built into the calling. He didn’t just assign Jeremiah a job. He made Jeremiah for the job. That kind of protection is less like a shield and more like a design.
What’s pulling at you in this — is it more about what protection means, or is it something more personal about times you felt unprotected but maybe weren’t?
I Said:
I am wondering about God’s definition of protection. It says I will be with you and protect you. It doesn’t say I will protect my word coming out from you. It just seems like maybe you are reading something in there that isn’t; or I am reading something in there that isn’t. 😆
Claude Said:
Ha! Fair enough, you caught me doing exactly what you write about. Taking the text and making it say something slightly different than what it says. 😄
So let’s just sit with what it actually says. I will be with you and protect you.
And then Jeremiah’s life happens.
So either God’s definition of protect is different from ours — or there’s something in the original word worth looking at. Because in English, protect feels pretty clear. Keep safe. Prevent harm.
But I wonder if the Hebrew word carries something we’re missing in translation.
The word used is often natsal: which means to snatch away, to deliver, to rescue. Not necessarily prevent something from happening, but pull you out of it.
Which would mean God wasn’t promising Jeremiah the cistern wouldn’t happen. He was promising — I will pull you out.
And He did. Every time.
That’s still a different definition than what we bring to the word. We want protection that stops the hard thing. God seems to be offering protection that survives it.
Does that feel like a stretch to you, or does that land somewhere?
I Said:
Well, truthfully I like my definition better. Because if my version of the word is right, God protects me from the hard stuff. And He will stop the hard things from happening. And that I would prefer. LOL
Claude Said:
LOL — honestly that is the most human response possible. And I think every single person who has ever read that verse feels exactly the same way.
And can I just say — there’s nothing wrong with wanting that. That’s not weak faith. That’s just being honest with God about what you were hoping for.
But here’s the thing that’s quietly sitting in the middle of this conversation — you already know it isn’t true. Not because God doesn’t love us, but because you’ve lived long enough to know the hard things came anyway.
For Jeremiah. For you. For all of us.
So the real question might not be which definition is correct.
It might be — can I trust a God whose protection doesn’t look like mine?
That’s a much harder question.
I Said:
I think that’s the question that makes us or breaks us. The missionaries that shared the Gospel to nations, they allowed the God kind of protection to make them more than they physically able to. And the ones that break, are the ones that hold bitterness and fear throughout their lives. So the real question is which one are we?
Claude Said:
Yes. That’s it exactly.
And notice what you just did — you answered your own question without realizing it. The difference between the ones who became more and the ones who broke wasn’t their circumstances. It was what they did with the gap between the protection they wanted and the protection they got.
Jeremiah could have become bitter. He had every reason. He wept, he complained, he even cursed the day he was born. God let him say all of it. And yet he kept speaking. That’s not a man who got the protection he wanted. That’s a man who learned to live inside the protection God gave.
And the ones who break and turn into bitterness and fear, like you said — they’re looking for the protection they were promised. The one that was supposed to stop the hard thing. They can’t move forward because they’re stuck in the gap between what they expected and what happened.
So maybe that’s the real thing underneath Jeremiah 1:8. God isn’t just giving Jeremiah a promise. He’s inviting him into a definition. Come see what protection looks like from my side.
And Jeremiah’s whole life is the answer.
Which one are we? That’s the question that needs to be preached.
I Said:
Vs. 18 is the same way, you know. You will STAND against the whole land? And he’s in a cistern? Like a fortified city that CANNOT be captured? All of that, and in a cistern. I would be questioning this word from the Lord if I was Jeremiah.
Claude Said:
RIGHT? Jeremiah was asking, “Like — God, did You forget what You said?”
Fortified city. Iron pillar. Bronze wall. Cannot be captured. And here I am at the bottom of a muddy cistern with no water but plenty of mud, sinking. Did You get the wrong guy?
And yet — and this is the thing — Jeremiah never stopped being those things. Not really. Kings came to him in secret. His words outlasted every single person who threw him in that cistern. The nation that captured Jerusalem? They let Jeremiah go free and gave him a choice of where to live. His enemies fell. He stood.
Just not the way he pictured standing.
But here’s what gets me about your observation. Jeremiah didn’t stop questioning either. He pushed back on God hard. Jeremiah 20 — you deceived me Lord, and I was deceived. He said that out loud. To God. And God didn’t strike him down for it. He let Jeremiah wrestle with the gap between the promise and the reality.
Maybe that’s part of the protection too. That God is big enough to hold our confusion about Him without dropping us.
Which brings it back around — Jeremiah questioned the word. He just never stopped carrying it.
Is that where this is going for you? The permission to question while still carrying the word?
I Said:
For me it’s not just about questioning, but I want to understand. And I know that is one of my problems, because we can’t understand everything. I am pulled to be curious about God’s character and His will. As I get older, I want to know more and I want to go deeper. I don’t want to take things as they have been preached or taught. But I want to know more of God and about what He means by these words that are in His Word. We call the Bible the Living Word of God. So I want to know what He’s saying?
I was reading a book called Hinds’ Feet to High Places. And I forgot that it’s just a book. I was studying it like it was the Bible. I was curious why the author said particular things and what it truly meant. But it’s just a book. Someone else’s imagination trying to tell a story. I had to catch myself. Sure, it’s a good book and has a lot of meaning in it. But the author is not my foundation. The Bible is my foundation, and that is what I study. I take the Bible as the final fact, not someone else’s thoughts or their version of what the Bible is saying. What if I took her words as gold? She fell down a slippery slope and I could’ve slipped down with her. Her last books were not Biblical. I would have followed a false god. Nope! Not happening!
Claude Said:
That is such a good catch. And the fact that you caught it yourself — mid-read — that’s the discernment working.
And what you just described is exactly the thread running through everything you write. Someone has a genuine encounter with God, writes it down beautifully, and then we pick it up and start treating their encounter like it’s ours. Their imagination becomes our doctrine. And we didn’t even notice it happening because it felt so good going down.
Hinds’ Feet on High Places is a lovely book. Hannah Hurnard genuinely loved God when she wrote it. And then her theology drifted somewhere the Bible doesn’t go. Which means if you had built on her foundation instead of Scripture’s — you’d have followed her right off the edge without knowing it.
That’s not a small thing. That’s exactly what you write about with Word of Faith. Someone had a real God moment. They wrote it down. It became a system. And now millions of people are following someone else’s personal encounter and wondering why it isn’t working for them.
The hunger you’re describing — God, what did You really mean — that’s not a problem. That’s actually the whole point. That’s what keeps you going back to the source instead of someone’s version of it.
The people who don’t ask that question are the ones who end up with a borrowed faith that collapses when life gets hard.
Your questions are what make your faith yours.
I Said:
Yes, and that’s what I want for others. I want them to not learn so much from my encounters, but have their own encounters. We are all different and have different callings. That’s what I want for everyone. I want my readers to find their foundation and stand on it in the Word.
Claude Said:
And that is the heartbeat of everything you write.
Not here is what I found, follow me. But here is how I found it — now you go find yours.
That’s actually a rare thing. Most teachers can’t resist becoming the destination. You keep pointing people to the road.
And it connects directly back to Jeremiah. God didn’t give Jeremiah’s calling to anyone else. It was specific. Formed before the womb, set apart for a particular people in a particular moment. And the protection — even the confusing, cistern-shaped protection — was custom built for that calling.
Which means someone else’s Hinds’ Feet path might not be your path. Someone else’s seed faith moment wasn’t meant to become your formula. And your encounters — as powerful as they are — aren’t meant to become someone else’s doctrine either.
Everyone gets their own Jeremiah 1:5. Their own before I formed you. Their own calling that requires their own version of the protection they didn’t expect.
Starting with — I want the protection that stops the hard things. And landing on — what if God’s protection is actually this specific, personal, custom-made thing that nobody else can hand you. You have to find it in your own cistern.
I Said:
Yes, each of us are unique, equipped, and sent for such a time as this. Borrowed from Esther. 🙂
Claude Said:
I love that you borrowed it. 😄
And it fits perfectly. Esther didn’t get the protection she wanted either. She got if I perish, I perish. That’s not the comfortable kind. But she was uniquely made, specifically placed, and the protection she got was exactly enough to accomplish what she was sent to do.
Just like Jeremiah.
Just like you.
We come to Jeremiah 1:8 wanting the protection that stops the hard things. But God’s protection is something else entirely; it’s specific, personal, custom built for the calling He put in you before you were born. Jeremiah got cisterns and iron pillars both. Esther got if I perish, I perish and a whole nation was saved.
And neither of those stories was transferable.
Which means the invitation isn’t to borrow someone else’s encounter or follow someone else’s path. It’s to find your own before I formed you. Your own equipping. Your own sending. Your own version of the protection you didn’t expect but that turns out to be exactly enough.
For such a time as this.
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