Can I pray for you in any
way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Follow The Christian
Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk
** Like posts and send friend
requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn
** Become a Follower of
The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low; their
idols are borne by beasts of burden. The images that are carried about are
burdensome, a burden for the weary. They stoop and bow down together; unable to
rescue the burden, they themselves go off into captivity.
“Listen to Me, you descendants of
Jacob, all the remnant of the people of Israel, you whom I have upheld since
your birth, and have carried since you were born. Even to your old age and gray
hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry
you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
Isaiah 46:1-4
This ends this
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
We have a tendency to make a
horrendous mistake in the way we view our lives.
We tend to take things for granted,
especially when it comes to the Lord and all He has done (and is still doing)
for us.
It’s true, isn’t it?
We pass through day after day after
day until we have made it through a week and then we start working through the
days again, one after another. Soon, the weeks pass by until we have made it
through an entire month and then those months add up until another year has
gone by. During these times, we have a multitude of experiences, good and bad.
We also have a lot of time where it seems there is nothing of significance
occurring, even though it really is (frankly, just being alive is a gift we
should never lose sight of). All of this comes together to make up this thing
we call life, a life that was ordained by a loving God through which all things
are possible, a God who makes all things possible.
This includes the very lives we
live and yet, we are so often too slow to celebrate Him and all His does.
Sadly, we are more apt to revel in the accomplishments of a favorite sports
team or absorb ourselves in a popular television series than we are the Lord.
The things of the world take on a greater priority than the One who made it
all.
Well, today the Lord chooses to
remind us of a few things, things we had better commit ourselves to praise Him
for, things that put our hearts and minds in order by bringing us back to
basics in regard to what should be most important to us. Look at these opening
verses from Isaiah 46:
Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low; their idols are borne by beasts of
burden. The images that are carried about are burdensome, a burden for the
weary. They stoop and bow down together; unable to rescue the burden, they
themselves go off into captivity.
“Listen to Me, you descendants of Jacob, all the remnant of the people
of Israel, you whom I have upheld since your birth, and have carried since you
were born. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will
sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I
will rescue you.” Isaiah 46:1-4
Note here that the people of
Babylon had chosen to place their focus on the wrong things. They had placed
their faith, hope, trust, and worship in worthless idols, idols that in the end
would not be able to rescue them but rather weigh them down in sinfulness to
the point where they would experience the Lord’s judgment and go off into
captivity at the hands of the Persians.
Ironically, this is what had gotten
the people of Israel in trouble and in their current predicament, hauled away
by the Babylonians into a seventy year exile. Those who had committed the
atrocities of false idol worshipping had passed during that exile but there was
a remnant, a new generation of Israelites that remained, descendents of Jacob who
would be tasked with the rebuilding of the holy city of Jerusalem and God’s
temple.
To this remnant, the Lord brought this
message and He speaks just as loudly to us today:
“I have upheld you since your birth, and have carried you since you
were born. I am He who will sustain
you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue
you.”
Friends, we are made, carried,
sustained, and rescued by a Lord who has no rival, no equal.
Nothing else we have in life
possesses creation power or the ability to bring us through times of
difficulty. Only the Lord can do this.
Nothing else can sustain us,
protect us, and rescue us in times of need. Only the Lord can do this.
And ultimately, nothing can save us
from death and bring us to eternal life. Only the Lord Jesus can do this.
My blessed friends, life is a gift.
It has been that way since the day we were conceived. At that time, the Lord
began to wonderfully make us until that day when He delivered us into His
creation. From that day forth, He has carried us through all the many stages of
growth and development, from infancy through our young, preschool and elementary
formative years, then from youth into adulthood. He sustained us with life,
through it all despite the myriad of changes and transitions we have gone
through and rescued us from trouble every step of the way.
I pray that today you will join me
in making a commitment to not let a day go by without first giving the Lord thanks
for all He has done and all He is doing. For without Him, we would have not
gotten this far and without Him, we would have no hope for the future in this
life and the one yet to come.
Amen.
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
No comments:
Post a Comment