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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Though you were ruined and made
desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and
those who devoured you will be far away. The children born during your bereavement
will yet say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; give us more
space to live in.’ Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was
bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was
left all alone, but these—where have they come from?’”
This is what the Sovereign Lord
says:
“See, I will beckon to the nations,
I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their
arms and carry your daughters on their hips. Kings will be your foster fathers,
and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their
faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know
that I am the Lord; those who hope in Me will not be disappointed.”
Isaiah
49:19-23
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Disappointment only comes through
expectation.
It’s a saying I have used for many
years now through my life’s experiences.
You see, we have a real tendency to
get our hopes up about things too much. We yearn and yearn and yearn for
something to happen, for our life’s situation to change in a way that we desire
it to, and when it fails to happen, we are left in the dust of our
disappointment.
Maybe you have been there a time or
two.
Well, after a couple of these kinds
of occurrences in my life, I learned to temper my expectations so as to avoid a
hard fall if my hopes didn’t pan out. This took a lot of relying less on what I
wanted in life and more about what the Lord wanted. It sounds simple enough but
we tend to pray these words that Jesus taught us to say and then forget what we
are proclaiming:
“Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven.” Matthew 6:10
If we’re going to really pray this,
then we need to adjust our expectations accordingly. For when we pray for God’s
will to be done as we should, then we to seek that will, patiently wait for it,
and then accept it with thanksgiving when it happens. It’s really our only
proper response when you think about it.
So what happens when we do this?
What happens when we make our lives all about the Lord’s will and not our own?
Something beautiful.
For when we place our full trust in
Him, then our hope is fully in Him and as we see in our scripture passage
today, the Lord grants us a hope that will never disappoint:
“Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now
you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far
away. The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, ‘This
place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.’ Then you will say in
your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and
rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they
come from?’”
This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the
peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on
their hips. Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing
mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they
will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those
who hope in Me will not be disappointed.”
Isaiah
49:19-23
Although the Israelites were exiled
for seventy years, God had promised them that there would be a day when they
would be restored but that day would not come until His will for them had been
done and that will was for judgment based on their sinful worship of false gods
and idols, even after He had warned them over and over again not to do it. After
His will had been done in regard to the punishment, His will would be done in
the deliverance of His people from their bondage and their return home where
they would not only be free but once again esteemed by other nations as God’s chosen
people living in His promised land. All the people needed to do was maintain
and sustain their hope in Him and they would not find themselves disappointed.
Today, the Lord God Almighty still
provides a hope that will never disappoint those who maintain and sustain their
faith, hope, and trust in Him and His Son, Jesus, who He sent to save all
mankind from their sins. For through Christ, our hope is not just for the here
and now but forever when we say farewell to this worldly life with all its
hardships, wickedness, and affliction and move onto a life everlasting with God
and Jesus where there will only be light and love and peace.
And that is something we should all
hope for with eager anticipation for it is the only hope we can expect and
never be disappointed by.
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
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