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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.
But
when we continued to sin against them, You were angry.
How
then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on Your name or strives to lay hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have given us over to our sins.
Isaiah 64:5b-7
This ends today’s reading from God's holy
word. Thanks be to God.
Yesterday, we learned that if we gladly seek to do right by
following the Lord’s will and way, we can be assured that He will bring His
help to us, a help we are to patiently wait for.
There is no doubt that God honors and blesses a person’s
willing obedience to His commands and the fulfillment of His desires and
purposes. Conversely, there is no doubt that God despises a person’s decision
to disrespect Him, choosing sin over His righteousness and their own desires
over His.
Doing that is one sure fire way to fall out of God’s favor.
We know this because the scriptures tell us so. There’s no
need for us to guess how God feels about a blatant worldly, self-centered,
own-want-pursuing attitude. The word of God clearly lets us know it angers Him
and serves as the catalyst for Him doling out consequences on the offender. Look
at these words again:
But when we continued to sin against
them, You were angry.
How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on Your name or strives to lay hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have given us over to our sins. Isaiah 64:5b-7
Note the main problem here. The Israelites knew that God
hated sin. They also were very aware that His judgment would eventually fall if
His people failed to repent and turn from their wicked ways.
In other words, they knew that continuing to sin would
leave them falling short of God’s favor. And yet, they kept sinning anyways. They
all became like one who was unclean and no one called on the name of the Lord
or sought to lay hold of Him. He was an afterthought in their lives and so in
judgment, He made them an afterthought in His for awhile, hiding His face from
them and giving them over to their sins.
It was a sad state of affairs and could have been so much
different but human nature seems to have had a bad habit of wanting to test God’s
resolve, just like a stubborn, petulant child does their parents. May be that’s
just one of the reasons we are referred to as God’s children, because we give
our Heavenly Father fits during the time we’re growing up (and that is not the
conventional, worldly growing up period for a child but rather the span of a
lifetime).
God’s word today serves to send us a message. It’s time to turn
from sin and stop rebelling against Him and His word, will, and way. In
exchange, we need to fully surrender ourselves in obedience to His
righteousness, making His desires and purposes our own.
If we do that with unwavering commitment and consistency,
we can be assured that we’ll never fall short of God’s favor ever again.
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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