May 5, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD shall take no rest for yourselves, nor give Him any rest until He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” (Isaiah 62.6-7)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

“Rejoice at all times. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5.17) These are Paul’s words to the community of faith in Jesus as the Christ founded in Thessalonika. As a new body of believers in Macedonia, they would face fierce opposition and persecution. Transitioning from a Greek culture to a Kingdom of God culture was problematic in an of itself. Paul’s transition from Saul of Tarsus to Paul of the Christian movement is presented as a nearly “overnight” event. He was, as Saul of Tarsus, like those who would persecute believers with the spoken intention of “defending the faith of their ancestors.” As Paul of the Kingdom of Christ, he was the defender of those who had been made new by the promised Holy Spirit of God. The Christian community was a “new creation.” So, they had much in common. This is what helped to allow Paul’s message to have such a great impact. The work was not easy. His litany of hardships and persecutions was lengthy. His advice in the midst of all of it was short, sweet and to the point. “Pray without ceasing.” When he was blinded by the Resurrected and Ascended Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, on the road to Damascus, he was helpless to do anything else but pray. Prayer was his guide and his support and his weapon against the dark forces of the world. His call to “put on the full armor of God” was concluded with a call to prayer. (Ephesians 6.18) He gave to the Ephesians the same instruction as to the Thessalonians, “Pray without ceasing.” I am sure that such instruction comes from his rabbinic training under the master Gamaliel who was given to a love for Isaiah. Out of chapter 62, Isaiah’s prayer, the voice he found to speak as a man of “clean lips,” spoke ardently of “speaking without ceasing.”

The watchmen Isaiah appointed to stand vigil 24/365 were never to be silent and never to rest from praying and speaking for God to the people and for the people to God. Jerusalem, even with its ramparts broken down and the Temple desecrated, was still the city which God had established even before Abraham arrived from the Ur of the Chaldees via Haran where his father lived out his days. It was the intended purpose to bring Jerusalem back to a voice of challenge and change. The cohorts of Isaiah were called to pray without ceasing until God had re-established and restored Jerusalem and all of Israel as a light to the world, a beacon to the nations and a glory to God. Even when Isaiah says “…and makes her the praise of the earth,” it is not to praise Israel for her achievement but for her faithfulness to the task at hand. What is that task? It is nothing more and less than to praise God from whom all blessings flow. It is, as Jesus taught in His Sermon on the Mount, to “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.” It is as The Shema declared, “To love God with everything one has and to love the neighbor as yourself.” Paul’s advice was Isaiah’s promise was God’s joy. It should be ours as well. We are watchmen on the walls of our homes and businesses and community. Our lives should be instruments of prayer utilized in every venue of our activities. We are not saved by works, mighty ones of God. We are those who work to bring salvation to a level of awareness in every person. We can do this best through the invitation and opportunity to declare prayerfully the will and way of God. It is the reality of Solomon’s instruction when the Temple was being consecrated the first time. It was then and there he shared the word of God for the people, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send a plague among My people, and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.  For I have now chosen and consecrated this temple so that My Name may be there forever. My eyes and My heart will be there for all time.” (2 Chronicles 7.12-16)

Mighty ones, the forsakenness of prayer on behalf of the mighty ones of God has shown itself time and time again. In less than 200 years, the Kingdom was already compromised and under threat by foreign nations. In 400 years, the Temple was destroyed by those same nations having taken her leadership captive. And while it was rebuilt under the authority of Cyrus of Persia in 515 B.C., it was within a total of 1000 years that it was finally destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. One thousand years. Because a nation would not be consumed by prayer, it was consumed by bitterness and defeat. Shall it be so with the “new temple,” the Church, the Body of Christ which is, as Peter declared, “a priesthood of all believers“? We know from Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation, that the New Jerusalem will be a place of eternal worship and praise which is, in fact, praying without ceasing. If we are to be the authentic people of God, then let us take to heart the living out of the prayer which Jesus taught His disciples to pray “…on earth as it is in Heaven. AMEN.”

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 in whose name we pray. AMEN.