Lose The Excuses, Now!

Reviewing Isaiah 58 with friends, the problem the Lord was uncovering with Israel was having the right words but not His heart.  His heart reaches out, heals, forgives, gathers in the outcast, it is active and growing. 
The people had come to a place where they thought they could make God do their will.
They were trusting in acts done with a selfish motivation.


Enter the "sinner's prayer". 


The idea that you can pray a prayer and then go on living for yourself is not just foreign to the word of God, it is the exact opposite of Truth.


"My people have defamed My Name everywhere they go." is not just a lament over Israel, it is a current, up to the minute, cry of God as He sees a people who have allowed for a total disconnect between belief in God and acting and reacting under the control of the life of His Son. 


"That's just the way I am."  and other excuses like it, display a total misunderstanding of death to self, taking up your cross, and allowing the resurrection life of the Messiah to be the determining factor in your actions and reactions.  Behold all things have become new, is such great news, such powerful news, it must not be short circuited by excuses.


When we fail to be "in Christ" in the moment, we have the option to repent, we do not have the option to make excuses and go on living in opposition to what we say we believe. 


I wish I could convey the tone of this which is an urging us to recognize the incredible gift and beauty of having the life of the Messiah in us, available to us, to be a tremendous blessing to those around us. 


Much better than continuing to live with the disconnect and essentially telling the world that your God is a lie and people who claim to know Him are no different than any one else.

Isaiah 58 the chosen fast is not about food

Highlights from our little Bible Study
Psalm 50 and Isaiah 58 were the scriptures.  I was convicted by Psalm 50:20 not to talk about
other Christians in a bad way.
50:14,23 spoke to us of having a thankful heart.
Is 58:4 We do not fast to make God hear us.  Help us God to gain understanding and trust You to know what is best for us and what we need in any given situation.  From that place of trust we can truly enter into the rest of God.  The Sabbath rest that gives everything over to God.
We follow the Lamb and in any given situation He may be calling us to be the Lamb in that situation, the one who is willing to be 'sacrificed' for the good of others.
Verse 6 came alive in a new way, WE have put on bonds of wickedness on others by our judgment and expectation and God is saying to repent and remove what we did to others.
The naked and homeless was speaking of a lot more than the physical and the salvation that we speak of is not "just a ticket out of here" but to BE HERE fully manifesting God.
God feels what we are feeling. He feels what the lost are feeling.  We can receive from Him the heart to truly know the lost and what they are burdened with. WE need to get God's view of the situation and see how He is bringing restoration and by the power of HIs life within join Him in what He is doing.  Not asking Him to bless what we are doing but taking the time to wait and hear what He is doing and join Him.
So the challenge was to look at Isaiah 58:6 and pray to God to show us where we have done this and then obey Him in whatever He tells us to do or not do about it.
We stop the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness.
Dane had an insight that when God is not leading us and we speak to someone in a way that their father (or someone who hurt them used to) then the past hurts block that person from hearing what we are saying.
Those were the highlights.