ISAIAH 30:15

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.

TO PONDER

I don’t know about you, but when I face a disruption in my life that threatens my peace and security, my instinct is to immediately begin to work on finding solutions. It could be the failure of some important appliance in the home; it could be a large bill that wasn’t expected; it could be the diagnosis of a serious illness such as cancer; it could be being made redundant at work; it could even include a court summons accusing me of doing something that I was not aware I had done. Often, we have little time to come up with a proposed course of action to deal with the situation. The level of stress and insecurity can be quite intense.

Many of the Israelites of Isaiah’s day were living their lives as if they were completely in charge and could do whatever they liked – without any consequences. Then when problems occurred in their lives, they believed that they could perform some religious ceremonies and the gods (possibly even their god, Yahweh) would come to their aid to solve their problems. But, if the gods could not solve their problems, they could always offer their savings to some neighbouring nation and buy solutions from them (for example armies or mercenaries).

But, through the prophet Isaiah, God reminds the people that this will not work. He loves his people too much to let them get away with this way of responding to life’s challenges. God’s purpose for us is to live in relationship with Him, to be secure in His love for us, and to be actively living as his dearly loved children. But, our natural inclination, like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, is to want complete freedom on how we live our lives. Unfortunately, this will eventually lead us to be living without any protection or care or love from God – a living hell, if you like. This is not God’s plan or purpose for us, and he works hard to draw us back into his life fulfilling plan and purpose for us.

The process God gives to us is one of life-long repentance. Firstly, acknowledging that our independent living is not giving us the rewards we are seeking we decide to see if God’s way works. We learn that through Jesus’s life and death, we have been given a new birth certificate that says we are now fully God’s children and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us in living as His children. There is absolutely nothing we could do to earn or buy this new birth certificate; it is a free gift.

But we do need to learn how to live as members of God’s family. We come into our new family with all our old habits and lots of baggage. Some of this baggage we have used for our security. Our repentance is an ongoing process of giving up our old habits, letting go of our baggage, learning new habits and finding our security in God’s love and commitment to us. But we are not doing this on our own. We have all the resources of God and of his other children at our disposal to help and support us.

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for my new birth into your family. I want to grow and mature as your child. I entrust my life into your hands for you to keep growing and maturing me into the person you want me to become. Thank you for being there every time I mess up and try to take back control of my life. Thank you for your awesome love. Amen

Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping