Wednesday 29 Oct 2014

October 29: Isaiah 42:23-25

Key Verse: Isaiah 42:23
Who among you will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come?

Devotion:
Isaiah had a rough time with trying to persuade the people of Israel that they were no longer listening to God; and it is a tough job to do when people are so caught up in worldly ways and have neglected to listen to God. It is a hard task to try and open peoples ears when they have forced them closed for fear of someone persuading them otherwise. It is a thankless task trying to work for the people who seem hell-bent on working against everything you stand for… but Isaiah continued, and so should we.

It may be easy enough to give in to the ways of the world and allow people to make up their own minds about God; but that is not Gods way! He continues to want us to show people the truth and open their eyes to what the world does to us. He does not want us to beat them into submission but rather to show them love and perseverance and allow them to see just how much He has done for us already. By us realising how much God has already done for us, we get a deeper understanding of where we should be heading.

The people of Israel had all but closed off their minds to anything from the scriptures. They had almost re-written the scriptures so they could be more comfortable in their own ways. God’s ways are not our own ways and we need to realise that. When we go off on our own ways we find it very difficult to keep going with God and find it much easier to give in to the ways of the world. That is not God’s plan!

As servants of Christ we need to make sure that we do what Christ wants in our lives and not what we think is best. We have this distorted view of the world because we live in the world. We think everything can be bent and shaped into something comfortable for us. God has very specific ways and that is why He gave the people of Israel so many explicit rules and regulations. We need to take notice of them to find out what God actually wants!

Points to Ponder:
Do you break rules regularly?

Have you tried applying God’s commandments?