God’s Word is convicting and provoking, but it can be exciting and encouraging, among other things. Jeremiah described God’s Word as the joy and delight of his heart. However, not everyone feels that way.

When reading or studying the Bible, we sometimes have the experience that all of a sudden we see something we haven’t noticed before, or something that spoke to us at that moment, even though we read that passage a hundred times before. And then, we get so excited – and it can be from the smallest thing – and all we want to do is share what we learned and discovered with others. We are filled with joy and delight at it, but others don’t seem to understand what is so exciting and why we just want to keep talking about it. Has that ever happened to you?

This can be discouraging at times, because we want to keep talking about what we learned, and others just want to move on to subjects unrelated to God’s Word that in comparison, aren’t as exciting.

There is a time for everything, including talking about matters other than God’s Word. In those moments when we want to share what made our hearts joyful and full of delight, it can also feel lonely.

Jeremiah felt that way. The following verses describe his longing for fellowship with God and his desire to be near Him. And God reminds Jeremiah that if he draws near to God, God will be near to him. But He also instructed him to separate the precious from the vile. Then, Jeremiah will be used as God’s mouthpiece, His spokesperson. Wow!

Wouldn’t it be amazing to be God’s mouthpiece, to speak forth? God’s instruction to Jeremiah to separate himself can be applied to us as well. We should make every effort to insure that the precious is kept out and removed from the vile. It won’t take much for us to look into our own lives to see what those things are. When we separate from the vile and keep the precious, we can expect to be used as God’s mouthpiece. This means we need to be careful of the movies we watch, the books we read and the company we keep. Are any of these vile and dishonoring to God? Do we praise God and insult others (Ephesians 5:3-4) or curse others (James 3:9-10) with the same mouth?