I'm an Isaiah girl these days.
After being prompted to start my personal Bible time there I am struck by the power of the Lord. Today I kept getting stopped at Isaiah 1:18 and prompted to just mediate on that on scripture all day.
"Come now, let us reason together..."
I looked up every translation I could find for that one.
God INVITES us to work out our salvation WITH Him, not against Him or on our own as in:
I must do good
I must do better
Man, I messed up
but rather walk WITH Him and work it out, reason it out, make our case (and our case be dashed in the power and admonition of the Lord but go ahead and make it anyway)
Ah, sweet sweet Jesus that allows us to come and reason together!
So of COURSE, because God wants to leave His non-carbon footprints all over our lives, when I checked in with Oswald who arguably is the BEST devotionalist of all time his devotion was in Isaiah. I cannot wait to see what else God has for me through Isaiah!
(Ironically the title "How could someone be so ignorant" goes along with my coffee blog this morning too in a way)
Anyway...here is Oswald Chambers for today. Read and be amazed! I am!
January 29, 2009
How Could Someone Be So Ignorant!
Who are You, Lord? —Acts 26:15
"The Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand . . ." (Isaiah 8:11).
There is no escape when our Lord speaks.
He always comes using His authority and taking hold of our understanding. Has the voice of God come to you directly? If it has, you cannot mistake the intimate insistence with which it has spoken to you. God speaks in the language you know best— not through your ears, but through your circumstances.
God has to destroy our determined confidence in our own convictions. We say, "I know that this is what I should do"-and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelms us by revealing the depths of our ignorance.
We show our ignorance of Him in the very way we decide to serve Him. We serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, and hurt Him by our defense of Him. We push His claims in the spirit of the devil; our words sound all right, but the spirit is that of an enemy. "He . . . rebuked them, and said, ’You do not know what manner of spirit you are of’ " (Luke 9:55). The spirit of our Lord in His followers is described in 1 Corinthians 13 .
Have I been persecuting Jesus by an eager determination to serve Him in my own way? If I feel I have done my duty, yet have hurt Him in the process, I can be sure that this was not my duty. My way will not be to foster a meek and quiet spirit, only the spirit of self-satisfaction. We presume that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord— "I delight to do Your will, O my God . . ." (Psalm 40:8).
1 comment:
"God has to destroy our determined confidence in our own convictions." Great devotional as always! His really, really are.
Have you ever read "Susanna Wesley Servant of God" by Sandy Dengler? Yep... goes right along with this beautifully.
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