Today’s Tasting – Isaiah 35-36: Isaiah’s descriptive poetically speaks of the day when the righteous will be blessed:
Gladness will cover the earth and “the glory of the Lord and splendor of our God,” will be seen by all. God comes with vengeance to save you. Blind eyes will open, deaf ears will hear, the crippled will run, and the mute will shout for joy. Water will flow freely to produce growth and vegetation on the earth. The redeemed will journey the “Way of Holiness” Highway. Such words gave Israel and Judah hope prior to experiencing destruction.
Sennacherib invaded and captured Judah. The people heard their invaders yell words to discourage them from trusting their God to get them through their difficulties. Yet, they remained silent, not speaking a word, as King Hezekiah had ordered.
Today’s Nourishment: Will you remain silent in the midst of watching everything press in around you to trust your God to get you through? No matter what government officials may broadcast, the enemy of our souls may shout, or that person harassing may mock, our God is able to show us His glory and splendor in the circumstances of our lives today.
It is extremely difficult to remain silent when everything in me wants to speak the negative thoughts that come to mind while things press in around me. Yet, God is my Deliverer and Rescuer in such situations.
We were in the middle of renovating the Activity Room in our lower level basement to a Man Cave/Activity Room. I found out that I would have back surgery within the next two weeks. The night before undergoing back surgery, one of my best friends shared some devastating news with my husband and me. The day following back surgery, my computer crashed. I couldn’t drive for two weeks and didn’t feel like dealing with all this techy stuff—it just isn’t my passion. The medical bills started rolling in causing me to face the news of how our insurance now works. Three of our six grandchildren, who live in Colorado, were officially adopted a few days after my surgery, making it impossible to attend the court proceedings. We had planned a week at the beach with all of our children and grandchildren a year prior and the trip was approaching.
Following my two-week checkup, I took my laptop in for repair. We packed, loaded our vehicles, set out for our family vacation, and stopped every two hours for me to stretch and walk a little. After our family beach trip, my husband and I had a week to prepare for our children and grandchildren to spend eight days at Gigi and Poppy’s house.
This may all seem trite to you, but for me, my friend needed me. My body needed time to recoup, the technical devices needed repair, we really wanted to attend our grandchildren’s adoption, the Man Cave/Activity Room needed completing, and food and house preparations needed to occur for our family to visit.
I watched how God sent the right ones to keep The Bible Feast Blog going. My healing was occurring, while maintaining exercises and refraining from a majority of normal activity. The right one came along to work on my computer without charging an astronomical amount. It turned out, they replaced the hard-drive, repairing all my techy devices to sync and perform better than ever and saved all my information. My husband’s Man Cave/Activity Room came together and so did the preparations for a big party for the newly adopted grandchildren. Friends and family helped us prepare the house and food. My friend is leaning into the Lord and we are watching God at work in her circumstances.
It seemed that all around us, we heard words that discouraged us from trusting our God to get us through. Trying to stay focused on the important and not falling apart while everything around us (my husband and me) pressed in, we remained quiet and worked steady to watch how the Lord would work all this for our good and His glory. And He did just that—we had a blast a Gigi and Poppy’s house following a great family beach trip.
When you hear words that discourage you from trusting God to get you through your circumstances, how will you remain silent to watch God work things for your good and His glory?
Tomorrow’s Delight: Isaiah 37-39
Carolyn Marlowe, CCLC
Gigi to six adorable grandchildren
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