Wednesday, January 20, 2010

"How Is It Really Going?", by Pastor Kevin Lynch

From an individual to an entire nation. When it doesn't go well with God nothing works well.

It's just the way it is. God smooths things over.

If we allow Him.

Look at this passage from The Message paraphrase:

Isaiah 1:5-9

"Why bother even trying to do anything with you
when you just keep to your bullheaded ways?
You keep beating your heads against brick walls.
Everything within you protests against you.
From the bottom of your feet to the top of your head,
nothing's working right.
Wounds and bruises and running sores—
untended, unwashed, unbandaged.
Your country is laid waste,
your cities burned down.
Your land is destroyed by outsiders while you watch,
reduced to rubble by barbarians.
Daughter Zion is deserted—
like a tumbledown shack on a dead-end street,
Like a tarpaper shanty on the wrong side of the tracks,
like a sinking ship abandoned by the rats.
If God-of-the-Angel-Armies hadn't left us a few survivors,
we'd be as desolate as Sodom, doomed just like Gomorrah."

From all the descriptive terms used in that passage, the one that jumps out at me is...

"...nothing's working right."

I'm not a fan of the angry God theories that crop up whenever there is a world catastrophe.

I do however believe that there comes a point where the grace of God becomes so blocked by our own obstinacy and disobedience that it just doesn't get through anymore.

Let's face it friends, without the grace of God we are open to every negative and disastrous event that Hell can conjure up.

It must be tough to watch if you're God. Especially when being blamed for it all.

How about you today? Everything working right for you?

Probably not, but it's a tough expectation for EVERYTHING to work out perfectly.

It's when NOTHING is going right that grinds us down to a stub.

What God is saying today is that trying to go the distance without Him is like beating our head against a brick wall.

My friend, that wall isn't going anywhere and you will live with a perpetual headache.

Why not just step away from the wall, lay your head upon the shoulder of Jesus Christ and let Him walk you through your difficulties?

Keepin' it Real,

Pastor Kevin <><

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