Fire In My Bones: A Walk Through Jeremiah

By Douglas Humphries

“But if I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot.”
- J. 20:9

Heinrich Ewald called Jeremiah, “the most human prophet.” To Douglas Humphries, he’s always been Jerry, “the prophet who talked back.” Unexpectedly, blessedly standing in opposition to everything he thought it took to be one of the faithful.
Jeremiah’s story is one of rejection and destruction, tragic and yet profoundly hopeful. A true picture of what it costs to do the hard, right thing. What it means to follow God. What it means to even know God. And it found Douglas exactly when he needed it to.
Part biblical analysis, part memoir, part confessional. As much a reaction to scripture as it is an investigation of it. This book brings new insight into an old, but all too familiar story. A new way to consider an old, but dear prophet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365070709

Book preview

Fire In My Bones: A Walk Through Jeremiah

Fire in My Bones

A Walk through Jeremiah

by Douglas Humphries

Copyright © 2016 Douglas Humphries. All rights reserved.

Title: Fire in My Bones

Subtitle: A Walk Through Jeremiah

United States laws and regulations are public domain and not subject to copyright. Any unauthorized copying, reproduction, translation, or distribution of any part of this material without permission by the author is prohibited and against the law.

Cover by Allison Barclay - PaintedSummers.com

e-book ISBN: 978-1-365-07070-9

Introduction

But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if he doesn’t come through. - Francis Chan

This book was born out of a difficult season in my life. I hate the word season because, while it implies the transitory nature of these things, it manages to make the whole ordeal sound very straightforward, simple, and easy-to-deal-with. Then again, it’s better and more concise than saying, Life sucked. Hard. And the only way I could find to deal with it, barely, was to dig into the experience of someone who had it so much worse.

It was the Fall of 2015, and I had just moved across the country from my home in Austin, TX to Atlanta, GA. I won’t go into all the whys of my decision to move to Atlanta with limited funds, no job, and no place to live, but suffice it to say, I found myself in a new place, very much alone, and very much depressed. Waiting was the name of the game. I was waiting on so many things, but mostly I was waiting on God, who, for reasons I know I’ll never comprehend, seemed to be holding out on me.

It should be noted that, at the time of writing this intro, he still is.

I hesitate to put this book into any kind of specific genre. It is, in some ways, a scriptural analysis and a devotional, and yet it’s not really either of these things. It is something like a field guide to scripture, but even that is more scientific than what you’ll find here. Memoir, perhaps, is the best description, as it has the least number of requirements to meet. This book is, more or less, my thoughts as inspired by reading scripture. I publish it in the hopes that it may help someone else understand scripture, understand their own situation, maybe even understand God.

I’ve always felt an affinity for Jeremiah, or Jerry as I have come to call him. For many years I called him the Prophet-who-talked-back. It wasn’t until I took the time to give his words a full reading, or probably because I found myself in a similar position, that I actually began to understand why.

I should warn you, if you’re looking for pure knowledge, this might not be the book for you. As you’ll see, there are more questions here than answers. But I’ve learned that that is part of the process. I’m learning, even now, that you can’t really understand these things from a bird’s eye view. You have to get down into it.

So, if you’re ready, let’s begin.

Preface:

There are no biographies of prophets. No tell-all memoirs or scathing profiles. What we might get, at most, is a little preface. Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, a priest at Anathoth. Then maybe some of the years he prophesied during, in whose reign, etc. The rest we can only guess at. We can perhaps find external sources, archaeological data, but in the end, those must be, at best, well-founded theories.

Who was this man, I wonder? How old was he when the words started? We know young but not much more. Did he know what they were the first time? That’s what they never talk about in scripture. How does a prophet know, for sure, he’s a prophet and not a man losing his mind?

What was it like for him, really? Was he so confident, so faithful, that he never doubted for a moment that these were the words of the Lord? Or did he wonder? Did he question? Did he let them sit for some time in his own head until he could bear to hold them in no longer? Or could he not copy the words down fast enough?

Did he know? That’s what I‘m really curious about. Did Jeremiah know? Did he have any idea, when it started, what he was in for?

I:

You warned him. You did. You told him it would be