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BIBLE READING: Isaiah 45-47                 “I am He, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you...” — Isaiah 46:4                 God wants to get your attention. You, who are overwhelmed by the waves. You, who are feeling the heat of fire. You, whose body is wasting away. You, who are struggling under the weight of depression.   This is your Father speaking! This is the great I am, who has proven himself again and again throughout history. This is the one who has been protecting you since you were swimming in the womb, growing up in the world, and even now as your hair turns gray and your skin wrinkles. God has always been here, and he always will be.                 God sees your struggles, catches your tears, feels your pain, hears your prayers, and says, through the prophet Isaiah, “I will sustain you and I will rescue you,” and “I am God, and there is none like me.”   What is the problem that you think is too big for God? Place it before him and

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 43-44                 The absurdity of idolatry is clearly expressed in Isaiah 44. The image is of people working hard in their daily lives and using up all of their skills and energy to produce a metal idol or wooden god. They bow down and worship something that they have created with their own hands. They don’t seem to realize that it is still just a piece of metal or block of wood. The only power that the hand-made idol has is that which is superstitiously conferred upon it by the maker. Today, we make idols of our gadgets and apps, cell phones and computers. We find it difficult to go through each morning, afternoon, or evening without checking our email, updating our statuses, or texting our friends. We use up more of our energy and time with our digital idols without giving a serious thought as to what this is doing to us emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. Our hearts and minds are becoming jammed full of trivial messages and our long term

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 41-42                 Sometimes, we can read certain verses from Scripture a hundred times and fail to take them to heart, the way the Lord wants us to. Other times, we can linger on a verse or two, and let them minister life, healing, and comfort to us. Isaiah 41:10 is so rich with the promises of God, that it warrants some special attention from us.                 The first thing that the Lord wants to impart to us through this verse is that He doesn't want us to be afraid. "Fear not [there is nothing to fear]." It's been said that there are 365 "fear nots" in the Bible, one for every day of the year. One reason why God warns us against fear is that it can short-circuit the answered prayers and blessings that He has in store for us. Just as the Lord has plans for our lives, Satan and his dark forces do, too. While God's plans for us are good plans (Jeremiah 29:11), the devil's plans for us are evil (John 10:10). And

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 38-40                 In this chapter, we see how damaging pride can be not just to one person, but to a whole multitude of people–in this case the nation of Judah. But before we move on, I would like to present this piece of wisdom presented to us by King Solomon.   “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)             King Hezekiah led a righteous life when he started to reign in the nation of Judah. He reopened the temple & expelled the idols inside, he re-established the Passover feast and saved the nation of Judah from the invasion of Sennacherib, King of Assyria. The Lord even saved him from death! But as soon as Hezekiah had the opportunity to shine for God’s glory, he turned to pride towards himself and “his” accomplishments.   Pride, to clarify, has two faces: the pride that gives a sense of honor, such as a father with his child, and the pride that gives the sense of self-entitlement. The pride that the

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 35-37 “Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD…”                                                                                                                                                 -Isaiah 37:14-15                 Isaiah warned King Ahaz of Judah that relying on Assyria for help against Syria and Israel was foolish, for it would lead to Judah’s devastation (Isa. 7:1–8:8). His words were soon fulfilled, for Ahaz had to empty the temple and the palace of their gold to buy Assyria’s aid. He also encouraged false worship in Judah, modeling Jewish rituals after Assyrian paganism (2 Kings 16). Isaiah also foresaw that Assyria would invade Judah up to its neck—the capital city of Jerusalem (Isa. 8:5–8).                 Assyria invaded Judah during the reign of one of its few righteous kings—Hezekiah— eve

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 29-31 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling” -Isaiah 30:15 ESV             When I look at my family life, I see busy and hectic. When we work, we work a lot. When we play, we go all out. When we are home, we have kids to take care of or school events to attend. When it comes to church, we could be at a service or small group every other day if we really wanted. It can be hard to put time aside from our eventful days to rest and be quiet before God as today’s Scripture instructs.             Being quiet before God gets even harder when a monkey wrench is thrown into our busy lives. This could be a death in the family, a rebellious child, the loss of a job, or anything at all that is unexpected. When any of these happen to us, our first response is often to set things back to “normal mode”. Who wouldn’t want to do this? We

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 26-28 “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength.”                                              - Isaiah 26:3-4 God made an amazing promise through the Prophet Isaiah: “You will keep him in perfect peace.” What a promise – “perfect peace”! God promises that we can have perfect peace, and even be kept in a place of perfect peace.   In the original Hebrew text, the term “perfect peace” is actually shalom shalom. This shows how in the Hebrew language repetition communicates intensity. It isn’t just shalom; it is shalom shalom, “perfect peace.” It is as if God wasn’t satisfied to give us one door of peace to walk through; He opened up the double doors of peace and said, “shalom shalom.” If one assurance of peace is not enough for us, He will follow it with a second and then put on top of those two the promise to keep us there.         

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 22-25 “O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.”                                                                   -Isaiah 25:1                     We cannot help but notice Isaiah’s very personal relationship with God. In-between the different prophecies God gave Isaiah are passages where he seemed overwhelmed by what he had been given and needed to stop and simply worship God. He praised God for His actions in the past, and the promises He made and then faithfully accomplished. The reliability of God, the fact that He does exactly what He promises, is an often-repeated thought throughout the Book of Isaiah. Since God is faithful, we can be certain that He expects us to be faithful in our service to Him and others. The story of Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, the disciple of the Apostle John, well illustrates this faithfulness. When he was brought befo

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 17-21                 How can I know if the Bible is actually true? Do I have to simply believe, or is there evidence that I can use to help support and guide my belief?                 Fortunately, the answers to these questions can be found in the Bible itself. While some religions depend on feelings to determine that what they teach is true, the Bible has internal evidence that shows that it is indeed trustworthy.    This chapter of Isaiah talks about the fall of Babylon, a nation that was oppressive toward God’s people. “They prepare the table, they spread the rugs, they eat, they drink. Arise, O princes; oil the shield! . . . Then he who saw cried out: “Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord, continually by day, and at my post I am stationed whole nights. And behold, here come riders, horsemen in pairs!” And he answered, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground.”                              

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 14-16 “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”    - Isaiah 14:14             Geoffrey Grogan writes, “It is a strange paradox that nothing makes a being less like God than the urge to be his equal, for he who was God stepped down from the throne of his glory to display to the wondering eyes of men the humility of God (Philippians 2:5-8).” To the human mind, it seems such a contradiction that to make oneself like God means to be humble. The temptation to be God’s equal goes back to the Garden. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Adam and Eve wanted to be like God. Likewise, we often want to be the god of our own lives, determining for ourselves what is good and evil, running our lives and our little worlds for our benefit, and being reliant on our own resourcefulness. However, Paul tells us to have the mindset

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 10-13 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” — Isaiah 11:1                 “God’s people had forgotten God; they had forgotten his call to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him (Micah 6:8). God grieved at this because he had planted the people “like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock” (Jeremiah 2:21) and had expected them to grow and flourish and carry out his purposes in the world. But they had become wild and corrupt. The prophets warned that there would be consequences, and the people faced seventy long years of oppression in exile in Babylon.                 But in the midst of this tragedy, Isaiah speaks the sweetest words of hope the people could hear. Though the family line of King David, son of Jesse, had been cut down to a stump, out of the deep, thick humus of human faith and suffering a tender new shoot would grow. This little green sprig would be a sign of something new spri

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 4-6                 This is a story about four people named   Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have. The story may be confusing, but the message is clear; no one took responsibility so nothing got accomplished.   Sadly, this story becomes the norm in many of our churches.   So many people expect someone else to do the job that anybody could do, but in the end, nobody really does it.   That was certainly not the case with Isaiah the prophet.   When he heard the voice of the LORD say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”; there doesn’t seem to be any hesitation in his voice, as he q

BIBLE READING: Isaiah 1-3                 When we read Isaiah 1, there is a problem immediately evident. God's analysis of the human race is that we are fundamentally tainted with self-centeredness so that we do not want to do good. We only want to minister to our own needs and our own lives. As a solution, God says in v. 16, Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good. But, the question arises, how can evil people do good things? This question is answered in verses 18-20. It could not be put any plainer. There is no help in man himself. We cannot heal ourselves. We need more than our habits changed. We ourselves need to be changed, and that change can only occur in a relationship with the living God. This is the good news, this is the gospel. It looks forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus and the shedding of his blood, his taking our place that God might put our sins upon him, and thus

BIBLE READING: Solomon 5-8                 Who is your best friend? Most of us think of childhood friends we played with, college roommates we got into trouble with, the parents we call in times of need. Have you ever thought of your spouse as your best friend?   In Song of Songs 6:3, the intimacy between the husband and wife is unmistakable: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” Their commitment to each other is evident as they wholly give themselves to each other. We can experience the same in our own marriages.   Spouses become best friends when we invest in three areas of our relationships. 1. Mind - The longer you’re married, the more you’re able to think like your spouse. When a couple spends time communicating with each other about the big and small things, they build an intimacy into their marriage. 2. Heart - The Bible tells us that a cord of three strands is not easily broken (Ephesians 4:12). When God is the center of your marriage, you encourage each other

BIBLE READING: Solomon 1-4                 Solomon, who reigned over the united kingdom 40 years (971–931 B.C.), appears 7 times by name in this book (1:1, 5; 3:7, 9, 11; 8:11, 12). In view of his writing skills, musical giftedness (1 Kin. 4:32), and the authorial, not dedicatory, sense of 1:1, this piece of Scripture could have been penned at any time during Solomon’s reign. Knowing that this portion of Scripture comprises one song by one author, it is best taken as a unified piece of poetic, Wisdom literature rather than a series of love poems without a common theme or author. Two people dominate this true-life, dramatic love song. Solomon, whose kingship is mentioned 5 times (1:4, 12; 3:9, 11; 7:5), appears as “the beloved.” The Shulamite maiden (6:13) remains obscure; most likely she was a resident of Shunem, 3 miles north of Jezreel in lower Galilee. Some suggest she is Pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kin. 3:1), although the Song provides no evidence for this conclusion. Others fav