Thursday Reading: Isaiah 47:7-9
Key Verse: Isaiah 47:8
8 Now then hear this, O pleasure seeker, who lives carelessly; who says in her heart, I am, and none else is; I shall not sit as a widow, nor shall I know the loss of children.
Devotion:
Overconfidence in anything can cause a whole lot of heartache when things do eventually go wrong. It is not the fact that you have not thought of every eventuality that will get you down but rather the inevitability of the situation that will catch up with you and then the realisation that everything that you have done up to that point has been largely a waste of effort! Now I am not saying that we are all failures and that we should expect nothing else other than failure in our lives because clearly we are not. But what I am saying is that we need to remember the truth from the beginning!
Lots of big words in the first paragraph so let’s keep it simple now! The truth is simply that if we ignore the truth it will eventually catch up with us. That is easy to say and often easy to show others but dealing with that in our own lives can be difficult because none of us want to accept the fact that we may be wrong or that we are doing things wrong. We all like to think that we are right and that everyone else is wrong – that’s called pride and arrogance! God has shown us time and time again what pride and arrogance lead to and yet we still insist in our own little minds that we will be OK!
Babylon had over-stepped the mark and was now full of pride over what they had done in taking the Israelites. The truth was that God had allowed it to show the Israelites that they needed to depend on God always. We need to take note of both side here, the fact that God allows things into our lives when we are walking away from Him and also the fact that if we think we have achieved things by ourselves then we are sadly mistaken – God is still in control whether we acknowledge Him or not! The sooner we get to grips with these truths the sooner we will be able to live for Christ!
Points to Ponder:
What have you achieved?
What has God achieved in your life?
