SHUT DOWN AND SHUT OUT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“When I came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Was My arm too short to deliver you? Do I lack the strength to rescue you?”

“By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea, I turn rivers into a desert; their fish rot for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with darkness and make sackcloth its covering.”

Isaiah 50:2-3

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever felt like someone you were trying to help shut down in the midst of their circumstances and as a result, shut you out? Maybe you have even been the person who did the shutting down and shutting out.

It’s easy to do, right?

Life is hard and in the midst of any number of hardships, we can at times be led to a place where we just want to give up. We lose faith in anyone or anything, including ourselves, and when faith departs, hope is typically right along with it. Faithless and hopeless, we fall into an isolated place of despair and depression, cutting the tethers that would anchor us to any possible source of assistance.

As we look at the opening verses of Isaiah 50, it’s rather obvious that the people of Israel have reached a point where they have shut down and shut out God from their lives. We know because God’s own words, spoken through the following verses, indicate as much:

“When I came, why was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Was My arm too short to deliver you? Do I lack the strength to rescue you?”

“By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea, I turn rivers into a desert; their fish rot for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with darkness and make sackcloth its covering.”  Isaiah 50:2-3

Note here that the people had shut down their faith in God to the point where their hearts were not prepared to receive Him. He came to them but found no one who was ready to welcome Him in. He called out to His people, hoping that someone would reply only to receive no answer. There was only silence and isolation.

Maybe we can be this way as well. Not willing to wait patiently for the Lord to work in His perfect way and in His perfect time, we give up on Him, even though He never gives up on us. We are unwilling to persevere through our difficulties and trust the only One who can truly help us. And so we simply withdraw and surrender to the circumstances that we are under without belief that God cares.

If only we would remember one important thing about the God we serve: There is nothing beyond the work of His hands.

The people of Israel seemed to forget this and so the Lord reminded them that He was the One who could dry up seas and rivers with a simple spoken word, the One who could command the heavens to do as He wished. No one else could do this because no one else was God.

How quickly we forget this as well? As in so many other instances, when we read the Bible, we sadly see where we still haven’t learned from the mistakes of those who have gone before us and it’s been more than 2,000 years since the accounts we read within the scriptures.

When will we learn? When will we develop the kind of faith that sustains through any difficulty we face, knowing that we can do all things through a Lord who can do all things? When will we be willing to wait patiently for the Lord to do His perfect work in His perfect time in our life’s circumstances?

Friends, the Lord is speaking to us with a mighty power today, reminding us to never lose faith or hope because He is with us. We should never allow ourselves to get to a place where we shut down our faith and shut Him out of our life. If you’re feeling any inclination to do so, ask yourself who is leading you there. It’s either the Lord or it’s Satan and I guarantee you it is the latter every single time for the Lord would never ask you to lose your trust and hope in Him and Him alone.

Rather, He would ask you to answer the questions found in our passage today in the midst of any difficulty you may go through, questions I will end this devotion on:

Is My arm too short to deliver you?

Do I lack the strength to rescue you?”

If we serve a Lord who can do all things, there is no hardship we will come to that He can’t bring us through. Patiently wait on Him, allowing His perfect work to be accomplished, and never shut Him down or out.

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