Look! Listen! God's arm is not amputated - he can still save. God's ears are not stopped up - he can still hear. There's nothing wrong with God; the wrong is in you. Your wrongheaded lives caused the split between you and God. Your sins got between you and God... (59:1-2)Hmm. That sounds familiar.
"No matter what is happening to you, your worst problem is in you. And that problem is not how badly you feel, it is how poorly you love. Your failure to love Me above all else and to love others at any cost to yourself defines your unholiness. When you recognize your unholiness and own it without excuse, your ears will be opened to hear my words of comfort and hope. And those words will set you on the narrow road to relating with holy love. There is no other kind." 66 LLThis journey through Isaiah has been an exercise in God encouraging me to own my unholiness without excuse. I hear you, Lord. I want to hear your words of comfort and hope that will set me on the right path.
We live in a culture that encourages us to excuse every personal flaw by blaming it on others - parents, spouse, teachers, lack of money, lack of opportunity, whatever. I'm aware that my tendency to excuse and blame is deep-seated, but God doesn't want to hear my excuses for disobedience. He wants me to be troubled by my unholiness.
"Untroubled people have closed ears. Only troubled people hear My story of love." 66 LLI am troubled, Lord, by the sin I've been experiencing in my own life. I know that's your grace. Thankfully, I sense that you're using this difficult time to grow me personally and to grow my marriage.
While it's not been fun or comfortable, Harry and I are having different conversations that we've had in the past, and we're actively wrestling with sinful coping mechanisms and faulty relational patterns as we draw near to God and each other. That's a good thing. You're causing us to face the hard truth about ourselves.
"I do not cure your unholiness by overlooking or understanding it. To overlook it would be to miss the spot on the x-ray that will destroy you. To understand it in light of what you've suffered would be to excuse it. I do not heal your selfishness by affirming your value. I solve your deepest problem with My self-sacrificing, reconciling embrace that forgives all this is unholy within you." 66 LLEven as you're stripping me of my illusions about my good-enough self, I feel strangely comforted by you, God. I love the glimpses of Christ that I see here, the ones that serve as a reminder that your Story is grander and better than anything I can dream up. It's much more clever and complete than I would have ever imagined.
The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners. God sent me to announce the year of his grace (61:1)
"It is: I: I speak what is right, I, mighty to save!" (63:1)
But you're our living Father, our Redeemer, famous from eternity! (63:17)Lord, you do bring freedom and healing. I've seen that in my own life in so many ways. I pray that you will teach me and empower me to love you and others well as you free me from my often self-imposed captivity. Thank you for your reconciling embrace that forgives the worst within me. You are mighty to save!
2 comments:
Right there with you, Cici. Bowled over by my unholiness, knowing that the wrong is in me, but so often stubborn in my willingness to really look at my sin, call it what it is and admit my need for the Holy Spirit to do surgery on me.
As you've seen from my blogs lately, I'm reading Tim Keller's book, King's Cross and had to share a passage that hits on this same theme that the wrong is in me:
"According to Jesus, in our natural state we're unfit for the presence of God...Why do we work so very hard, always saying, 'If I can just get to this level, then I can relax'? And we never do relax once we get there - we just work and work. What is driving us? Why is it that some of us never allow ourselves to disappoint anybody? We have no boundaries, no matter what people ask of us, how much they exploit us, trample on us, because to disappoint somebody is a form of death. Why does that possibility both us so much? Where are all the self-doubts coming from?...You may psychologize it: I have a complex, my parents didn't love me enough, I'm a victim, I have self-esteem issues. But there's no escaping the act that we all have a sense we're unclean...We are what's wrong. It's what comes out from the inside. It's the self-centeredness of the human heart. It's sin."
Just loved this post today. I printed it to keep it in my Bible cause it means much to me. Isa 59:1-2 is truth I want to hold onto. Larry said to me one time: "We all resemble more of Adolf Hitler than we do of Jesus Christ." Starting a new job and I've so wanted to make a good impression, like the first 7 seconds when you meet someone is supposed to be their lasting impression ;) ... but what drives me that I so want to say the right words before an audience that point to Christ and make me feel fulfilled---it's about me not about God. And I don't want to disappoint so I'll go to vast measures to serve. Just read Romans 11---don't be proud but fear. Fear God, Bev! Loved your post today and will remember it for a long time. And, best of all, God's Spirit is on you Cici. What stirs in you and Harry is no formula thing. It's God! Love you so!
Post a Comment