March 15, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant— My loving devotion promised to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the nations, a leader and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, has bestowed glory on you.” (Isaiah 55.3-5)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

God’s way and thoughts as revealed in verse 3: “incline your ear, come to Me and listen” will not only assure our soul will live but live in a place of such goodness the world, especially today’s world, has never seen. It is a place that not even Eden can match or surpass. We have to be honest with ourselves as we consider that statement. No matter how idyllic that image of the Garden of Eden is, the “serpent” was there. His presence meant that we were not complete. We remain incomplete even now because the “serpent” is still here. A day is coming when we will dwell in a place where the “serpent will not be. At least that is our hope, the hope we place in Jesus our Christ. It is also the hope that Jesus our Christ has put before us. Mighty ones of God, it is not enough that our souls will live forever. What God desires is that our soul will dwell with Him forever. It is a terrible thought that our soul may live without Him forever. Why do so many, and does that number include us, ignore this truth? The very concept of death is misconstrued. Our death is not “dust to dust and ashes to ashes” as if that is all we are. We have certainly been made out of the dust of the earth. It is our created reality bound deep in our DNA. Somewhere in the genome of every human being, indeed in every living creature, is the element of dust- the dust of the earth.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian community of faith, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of power is of God and not ourselves.” (2 Corinthians 4.7) That excellency of power is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. It is in our soul that the “who we truly are” co-exists with “who God truly is.” The desire for connection exists that deep inside us. We either connect or we don’t. It is not a chance meeting. It is a pursued reality. Either we do or we don’t. If we do, if our soul demonstrates the connection because it is our desire to be connected, then our soul lives forever with God in the very image by which we were first created. The reality is that we cannot do it on our own and we never could. Is that an unfair truth about the God who made us? Did God make us to have to depend on Him? Does that mean God is selfish and manipulative? Those questions have been asked millions of times and debated by people smarter than me and smarter that you, too. But that is not the case. Because God is by His very nature “love,” then such freedom to choose and choose wisely is a necessary part of who we are and who are, or can, become. God provides us the resource to “be all we can be.” That “all we can be” does not mean we will be “God.” Only God is all things. He is the YHWH of existence, the I AM that I AM. Imagine this, we can choose to be loving as God is or we can choose to love in ways God would never choose. The challenge is that those ways exist; they have to exist. Without the choice, there is no freedom. Even God had to make the choice. God had to choose to be creative and risk the aberrations or deny that His very nature was authentic love.

We get to see this choice at Calvary on Golgotha, in the Upper Room, in the Garden, in the Temple courtyard, in the Roman palisade, on the Via de la Rosa (as it is called now) and on the Cross. It wasn’t just any cross. it was the Cross of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Son of Man. He was the living example of the heart and soul of God’s love. As He was so we are shown that we are to be as well or we can be like the serpent. I know that words that Jesus used to help Nicodemus understand the choice which said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so, too, must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him might be saved.” (John 3.14) Jesus had to make that choice. He either was going to be the image of the serpent and give temporary passage in this world or to be the image of God and give eternal freedom in a world this world had not known. Hear the power of truth which Jesus intended as He declared “My Kingdom is not of this world, if it was then My servants would take up arms to prevent My demise. But now [you are seeing] My Kingdom is of another world.” (John 18.36) The very call to discipleship by which we are called invites us to “take up your cross and follow Me.” (Matthew 16.24) The choice is to deny ourselves, our desire to live without God or worse to live as if the image of God was of our own making and choosing, and to follow Him, to be like Him and to become Him. Jesus said, “Take My yoke and put it on your shoulders and understand My yoke has been made to easily bear so that the burden becomes light.” (Matthew 11. 28-30) In doing this, as God promised Israel through the teachings of Isaiah and as Jesus taught His disciples for our sake, we will call up (or call out) a nation that has not been known to date. It will be such a nation as the nations of the world past, present and future have never known. It will be an undeniable nation where the glory of the Lord will be made so visible that everything else will become unseen. It will be a nation of glory and light, love and goodness, truth everlasting without doubt or question that give rise to the afflictions which the lie has prospered. What is that lie? It remains the very one “the serpent” uttered into the ears of God’s created people. Proposed as a question, the serpent invoked the choice of realities saying “Surely God did not mean you would die, did He?” The intimation of such question speaks to the very truth that we are not merely dust of the earth. We are more than creatures of this world, this globe, this nation or that community. We are children of the Most High God, created in His image and bestowed with His Spirit so that the image in which we have been made can be realized unto eternal life with Him now and forever. We will be the desire of nations because we are of One God, One Truth, One Way, One Life and for us there can be no other.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ. AMEN.