Planning a life without God is living a life without God. Living a life without truly listening to God is living a life of our own choices. Christian or otherwise.
- (Isaiah 37.6) This is what the LORD says
(Isaiah 37.21) This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says
(Isaiah 42.5) This is what God the LORD says
Picture a planet on which God hasn’t spoken. We are left to ourselves, to think for ourselves, plan our own way, decide our morals and ethics.
Ah, now this is the life!
But how discouraging and unnerving as one system of thought, one philosophical system falls victim to the next and that one to the next, and what is certain one day is scoffed the next decade.
Imagine a planet on which God doesn’t interfere with our lives. No looking over our shoulder, no fear of God’s judgment. (He isn’t there. Why fear him?) God no longer tells us how to live our lives, how we should speak to other people, how we should relate to each other. God is absent. No more of his righteous intrusions.
And isn’t this the world we have tried to create? Christians and non-Christians as we do not listen when God talks.
I am reading through Isaiah and again and again I read “this is what the LORD says” and again and again I breathe the air of heaven. God is not absent; he has spoken; he is there; he speaks to me.
Now listen to and feel the rain fall. Read the following verse, hear the chorus or raindrops on the roof and siding and step outside into the goodness of God.
And listen to him speak to you words that last way past the end of this age.
- Isaiah 55.10-11
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields
seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,but will accomplish
what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
“This is what God the LORD says.”
How refreshing and encouraging. God has spoken, written it down in fact, everything we need to know, everything we need to live as he intended.
But even as Christians, we sometimes live in the other world because we deny the power of God in our lives.
God’s word is well and good as long as he is waving his wand of blessing in my direction, taking care of me, putting my people in office, supporting my various agendas.
God speaks to us. Say it again, Dave. Okay. God speaks to us! Can I get an “amen” from the back row? What a tremendous blessing when he “interferes” with his living words.
Let’s not resist so much the voice of God. Let the words on the page become living words in your life. Let this be a spring rain – “this is what the Lord says” – on our thirsty souls.
