Week 17: Isaiah 30:18-26

 

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him. O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, "Be gone!" Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous; on that day your livestock will graze in a roomy pasture. Also the oxen and the donkeys which work the ground will eat salted fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.

Isaiah 30:18-26

 

 

I absolutely love this passage.  I apologize that it's a little long, but there is just too much goodness to ignore!  I don't think there are any of us out there who would be willing to say we don't want the direction of the Lord.  I am at one of those times in my life where I need His direction so badly.  So many life altering decisions that I have coming up, I really need God to guide my steps.  I think we all need to get to a point where this desire of God's direction becomes a necessity in everything we do, even in our daily routines.

That is what first drew me to this passage though.  Verse 21, "Your ears will hear a word behind you, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or to the left."  I have actually had this verse written up on a little white board on our refrigerator at home for about a year.  Sadly, as too many things God bring to my attention, it has been up there so long that I had forgotten about it.  Just another decoration that's been hanging on the wall so long it now gets overlooked.

God brought it back to me this week though; and then some.  I saw that verse on the fridge and prayed for God to guide me.  Then I decided that I would go back and look up some of the different translations of that verse.  What I found was the rest of the promise!  It completely blew me away!  The promise could really go all the way to the end of chapter 30, but I decided to cut it off at verse 26.

I love how this promise starts off though.  God, the Creator of the universe, LONGS to be gracious to us!  God, the Lord of EVERYTHING, is literally waiting on His throne to have compassion...ON US!  And the only thing that is asked of us in return?  That we long for Him.

When we long for God, He longs for us.  Even when we don't, He still longs for us, He still pursues us.  He longs to be gracious to us; He waits to have compassion on us...so what are we waiting for?  He can't come to us with His promises until we come to Him.  We can't receive His gift until we ask for it.  Once we start to long for Him - the way He longs for us - that is when His promises start coming alive.  So let's look at the promises we have in store for us in this verse alone:

1. You will weep no longer
2. He will be gracious to your cry, hear it, and answer it
3. He will no longer hide himself from you - your eyes will see your Teacher
4. You will hear His voice and He will guide you
5. All idols, addictions, impurities - anything that gets in the way of your relationship with God - will be defiled in His presence.  He will give you the strength to tell these things "Be gone!" (How powerful is that?!?)
6. He will give you rain for the seed you sow, food from that seed and it will be rich and plenteous...in other words, God will bless your socks right off!
7. I love verse 26 too...your nights will be as bright as day, no more darkness!  Your days will be seven times brighter than they were before you came to Jesus!  He will bind you up and heal you!

God doesn't ask anything from us, but that we long for Him the way He longs for us.  Come to Him and He will come to you.  I was joking with Jake Kohring this morning because we were trying to isolate one of these verses to move on, but there was just too much goodness!  I made the comment that we should just move on the whole book of Isaiah this week.  There is so much truth in that though. 

We are moving on promises week by week.  One (ish) promise a week.  But when you come to Jesus - when you long for Him the way He longs for you, every single promise in the Bible becomes YOURS!  Even if you aren't real sure about all of this, come seek Jesus anyway.  When you find Him, and you will find Him, it will be impossible not to fall head over heels for His grace and mercy.

So let's move this week friends!  Let's pursue God with the same tenacity, desire, longing and love that He has been so faithful to pursue us with.  Let's long for God the way He longs for us, and let Him open these promises in our lives!

Week #16 Romans 4:20-21

Week 16: Romans 4:20-21

"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." NIV

First off thank you Jeremy for asking me to write this blog. At first I was a little nervous because sometimes I think, "Patsy you're not as seasoned a Christian as these other people, what can you offer someone who already knows more then you, you're just going to make yourself look like a fool because you don't know the Bible as well as them." Funny those horrible little thoughts pop up from the enemy because the verse I picked is all about having unwavering faith. It doesn't matter what stage in your walk you’re at, or how many verses you have memorized, what really matters is your personal relationship with the Lord and no one can tell you or me that relationship is not there or lacking; only you and the Lord know. There are so many great promises in the Bible that we need to stand on, so having a group like this is such a great way to dig a little deeper into all that God has in store for us. 

The title to the whole chapter of Romans 4 is “Abraham Justified by Faith”. I'm actually going to speak a little bit about this whole chapter not just the verse that I have picked to move on.  Abraham believed in God, he had faith to the very end that he was going to get a promise that God gave him: to have a son. The interesting part about this is that Abraham and Sarah had to wait 75 years for this promise to be fulfilled! Can you imagine knowing God made you a promise, but having to wait 75 years to see it come to pass. I would definitely have started losing faith probably after the first week! There was a point in that 75 years that Abraham and Sarah tried to take it into their own hands.  Sarah told Abraham to sleep with Haggar and in that Ishmael was born which resulted in the decent of Islam into the world. That just shows us how dangerous it is to take matters into our own hands. We need to keep faith that God has what is best for us in His will for us. When we take the lead and try to do things on our own it's not what is God's best for us. 

The first part of the chapter in verse 3 says "Abraham believe in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." and then later in verses 7 and 8 it states, "Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them." Those promises right there blow me away! Because those promises cover every single believer, none of us have to worry about our sins being held against us.  It even says that we will be blessed because of it! What a great reminder of what Jesus did on the cross for us and how blessed we are to be able to share that promise with others so they can enjoy His promises as well. 

As that chapter continues it states that the promise comes by faith. Against all hope Abraham believed even though he knew his body was old and Sarah's womb was dead. Through all that he still believed! I don't know about you, but if that were me I can surely say that my faith would waver. I would be thinking this is hopeless we're never going to have a son. But we have Abraham to give us a great example of faith as Romans 4:20-21 states, "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." I love how the Message writes these verses, Romans 19-25, “Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, ‘It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.’ Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, ‘Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.’ But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God." That verse is so encouraging! For Abraham it was having a son, but for you it could be a different aspect of your life. This verse could apply literally to every single aspect of your life! We have to trust in God for everything because we just simply CANNOT do this alone. And with Abraham's example we know it's possible because we have Jesus living in us, it's not even our own strength. Abraham didn't question God enough to the point where he was doubting Him. To me that's crazy, I definitely know I would if I had been in his position. I am 100% guilty of sometimes not having as much faith as I should. But this week that will be what I stand on a daily basis, because it says, "the same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless." We are declared fit before God! How great of a promise is that!

I know that I lack faith and it's something I can work on daily. So this week I am going to stand on trusting and believing on a DAILY - every hour, minute and second that goes by - that my God knows exactly what He has promised me and the Bible says He will deliver that promise! I will not lack or waver in my faith this week or from here on out and I will be strengthened in faith and give all the glory to God in EVERY aspect of my life! I hope you take this same stance on this week’s promise and join me!

Week 15: 1 Timothy 4:16

Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

1 Timothy 4:16

Hello fellow movers!  Wow, I just have to say, WOW!  What a Holy Spirit shot of adrenalin I received yesterday!  Dayspring church in Bowling Green, Ohio was very blessed to have Jim Wilkes preach yesterday.  And when I say preach, I mean PREACH!  For those of you following this blog who don't attend Dayspring, I will make sure to upload the video of the sermon as soon as it's available so you can watch it.  If you don't want to wait for me, check Dayspring's Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/dayspringbg

Now on to the promise!

The promise this week comes from 1 Timothy 4:16.  The main reason I bring up the message yesterday from Jim Wilkes is because he talked a lot about radical obedience to God. The sermon series at Dayspring the past two weeks and moving forward is called "Unstoppable", and that is exactly what this promise is all about; making our message unstoppable.

Our most important task as Christ followers is to make disciples of all of the nations.  We need to, to quote Mr. Wilkes, "export people from the kingdom of darkness and import them into the Kingdom of Light".  So what if I were to tell you there is a way to make sure you are "unstoppable" at this?  Would you be interested?  I sure would be!

In this verse from 1 Timothy, Paul gives us a promise from God that "will ensure salvation both for yourself and those who hear you."  What an absolutely incredible promise!

"So meat and potatoes here, Jeremy." You say, "What do I have to do to save everyone who hears my message?"  Well I am so glad you asked!  Paul tells us in verses 9-15 what we must do:

It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all.

So here's the breakdown:

1. Put your hope in Jesus Christ, the Living God and Savior of all men,
2. Believe and teach the Gospel of said Christ.
3. Make sure that your life is an example of Christ Who lives in you - in your speech, conduct, love faith and purity.
4. Give attention - time, effort - to public reading of Scripture, to urging on your brothers and sisters in Christ and to teaching.
5. Make sure to cultivate your spiritual gift the Lord has blessed you with.
6. And finally...take pains in these things!  Don't just treat this as a check-list.  "Yeah, I guess I kinda did this one" is not going to cut it!  Paul says to "be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all."  You have to live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it!

This is the stuff that makes your message unstoppable!  This is the stuff that ensures salvation...not just for you, but for all who hear about Jesus Christ!  This is the stuff that changes the world!  Jesus is the One who changed our world!

Let's go change the world promise movers!  Let's show the world the God who changed ours!

Week 14: Proverbs 16:3 & Mark 11:24

"Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."

Proverbs 16:3

"Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you."

Mark 11:24

Hello fellow promise movers!  So I had an extremely difficult time deciding on which promise to move on for this week (as you can probably tell by the title of this post).  I was really stuck between these two passages from Proverbs and Mark.  Then this morning while I was joining in prayer with my friends Jake and Matt (continuing our promise from week 12 in Matthew 18), Matt suggested doing both of them.  His exact text read: "Sounds like they parallel.  Go with both...ha!  Doesn't commit to God assume some kind of prayer anyway?"

Absolutely it does!  If you and I are going to commit our plans to the Lord, we better be covering those things in prayer!  So we're going to break tradition (Jesus hated tradition that got in the way anyway, right?) and go with a little double promise this week.

And what a promise they are!  Commit whatever you do to God and you have guaranteed success!  Now there's a promise!  A lot of exclamation points here!  I apologize!  I'm excited!  Seriously though, does it get any better than that?  We live in a world that measures everything by how "successful" it is and God is telling you that He has a way for guaranteed success...just give it to Him and let Him do the work!  It almost too easy!

The same could be said with the verse from Mark.  "All I have to do is ask and believe and whatever I pray is as good as mine?"  Pretty much.  It's a lot harder than it should be though.  The problem comes in the believing.  We live in a world that lives by the quote, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is."  That is not the case with Jesus though.

I could sit here all day and write out Bible verses and famous theologians who agree that all you have to do is pray, ask and believe - to commit your works to the Lord - and it will be done.  If I did that though, you'd spend all your time reading this and not living out this outstanding promise from God! 

So stop reading and start doing!  There's only one way to find out if God's going to keep His promise.  So what are you waiting for?  Commit everything you  do to the Lord and He will bless your sock off and make you successful.  Pray, ask and BELIEVE WITHOUT A DOUBT and God promises it will be done.  Yes, it is absolutely too good to be true, but so is the fact that a perfect Savior would leave His throne to die for us and give us eternal life.  You believe that, so why doubt any of the promises He has made to you through His word?

MOVE!

Week 13: John 12:26

"If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him."

John 12:26

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!  A little late I know...but Christ is still risen, so technically every day is Easter!  I hope you all had a blessed time moving on the promise from last week.  I want to take a quick moment before I get into the new promise to remind everyone of the old promises.  Not trying to be a jerk or anything...it's more of a reminder because I have really struggled with it.  The point of moving on these promises is so that it makes changes in us permanently.

I realized this a few weeks ago, but I have not been doing very well at abiding in Christ the way I did when those were the promises we were moving on.  So just a friendly reminder...don't stop moving on the old promises!  Keep abiding, keep humbling, keep meditating, keep finding people to pray with.

Now on to the new promise!  I read a book a few years ago called Experiencing God by Henry and Richard Blackaby.  The book completely changed my life...I would highly suggest giving it a read if you haven't yet. 

One of the things they talked about in the book was how we approach going about God's work in our lives.  So many people, and I am one of them, constantly pray that God send them a task.  The Blackabys offered a new way to look at it, and John 12:26 mimics that.  Instead of praying that God send a laundry list of tasks for us to accomplish, we should instead pray that He reveal where He is already working in our lives.

This isn't to say that God doesn't or won't give us to-do lists.  I'm not suggesting that God doesn't give us specific tasks and ask us to follow Him to go accomplish what He has set out to do.  That's the first part of Jesus' promise here, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me."  Many times we miss the second part though, and I believe that is what the Blackabys were trying to point out.  "where I am, there My servant will be also."  So it's not just about being specifically sent out by God.  Every single day we wake up and put our feet to the ground, God is sending us out.  When we don't have something specific from Him it doesn't mean we get the day off from being a Christian.

God is going to use YOU!  That is what this promise is all about.  God wants you to follow Him.  Jesus is asking you to be where He is.  If He's not telling you to go somewhere, then ask Him where He is currently working in your life.  There may be a co-worker whose heart He has been "tenderizing" to receive the Gospel.  If you're waiting for Jesus to lead you somewhere else, you'll miss the fact that He's working right in front of you.

So focus on serving Jesus this week.  Listen to Him.  If He tells you to follow Him somewhere, then go!  MOVE!  If He tells you to sit still and rest in Him, then stay!  DON'T MOVE!  If He doesn't tell you to move or stay, then ask Him where He is currently moving in your life.  Ask Him to show you where He is and get there.

When you do, He promises that His Father, our Father, will honor us!  It doesn't get better than that!  Ok, enough reading...get moving!