When You Feel Deceived by God (Pt. 2):When calling Hurts

What if the season that made you feel most deceived by God becomes the very place He proves His faithfulness?

The Word:Jeremiah 20:7–13

I can’t leave this passage. For one, it’s why I wrote this devotional series. And two, I’ve been where Jeremiah is in this. 

I can’t overemphasize how jarring his words are. “O Lord, you have deceived me.” He feels like God called him into something and then left him exposed. He obeyed, and instead of favor he got public humiliation. Instead of easy fruit he got four walls and chains. That feeling isn’t unique to Jeremiah. Plenty of people who said yes to God have quietly thought, “God, what are You doing? This isn’t what I thought You led me into.”

I know something of that tension. My family and I have been in ministry for nearly 20 years. We started in Georgia with a great church. We loved the people and we loved the work. We could’ve stayed and been fine. Then God started stirring our hearts to plant a Jesus-exalting church in Utah with two other families. It didn’t make sense on paper, but the call began to burn. We prayed. We sought counsel. We stepped out in faith and made the move.

I’d love to tell you that everything has been peachy, but the reality is that the first few years were hell. (There’s no softer way to say it.) We walked through some of the hardest stretches of our lives. Dark nights of the soul where it felt like the ground had been yanked out from under us. More than once it felt like God had called us out here to Utah just to make us a laughingstock.

In those moments Jeremiah 20 stopped being a strange passage and started sounding like my own prayer. “Lord, did You bring us here just to break us? Did we mishear You? Did You oversell the dream and undershare the cost?” It felt, in my flesh, like we had been deceived. We left something good and stable to follow a call into a wilderness that didn’t seem to want us.

That’s where the “fire in my bones” became real. There were days it would’ve been easier to pack up, go back, or just shrink down and quit. But the call of God wouldn’t let go. Even when we felt emptied out, something kept burning. Jesus still wanted a witness here. He still loved the people of Utah. He hadn’t abandoned this place. And He hadn’t abandoned us.

Looking back, the pain of those first years hasn’t vanished. But it’s been reinterpreted. In the most painful years of our lives, God wasn’t mocking us; He was forming us. He was stripping away our illusions about ministry, exposing our idols of comfort and success, and teaching us to find our identity in Him instead of in how “well” things seemed to be going. What felt like abandonment was actually the severe mercy of a Father determined to deepen our trust.

Your story might look different, but the feeling can be the same. Maybe you said yes and walked straight into hardship. Maybe obedience cost you financially, relationally, or emotionally. Maybe you stepped out in faith and people watched, doubted, or laughed. It can feel like God set you up. But Jeremiah 20, and stories like ours, remind us of something solid: God often does His deepest work in the seasons that feel most confusing.

Jeremiah never gets an apology from God for how hard it is. (And don’t miss this). What he gets is presence. “The Lord is with me as a dread warrior.” The promise isn’t that the call of God will be comfortable. The promise is that you won’t be alone in it, and that God will stay faithful to His purposes even when you feel like you’re being deceived.

Take Heart:

If you’re in a season where the call of God hurts, you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. God hasn’t tricked you or toyed with you. He may be walking you through a painful stretch of the road, but His character hasn’t changed. The same God who called you is still with you in the hard places, working in ways you can’t see yet.

What if this is the very season He proves His faithfulness?

Search Your Soul:

• Where has your yes to God led you into unexpected pain?

• Have you quietly believed that God set you up to fail or be embarrassed?

• What might it look like to trust that He is forming you, even here, in ways you may only understand later?