Friday 13 October 2006

Seeing God’s blessings

“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” - Isaiah 58v13-14

People try all kind of things to see “God’s blessings” on their lives and ministries. The problem is when looking for God’s “blessings” becomes the motivation. We can all get caught in this trap. We see what seems like everyone else prospering while we are just plodding along in mundane service.

How do we overcome this problem? Verse 13 seems to have a helpful application – 1) Delight in the Sabbath. The idea is not just keeping one special day as under the Law, but to delight in doing things God’s way and following His plan, 2) Honour God; 3) Stop seeking our own ways and our own pleasures, 4) Don’t speak our own words. Then in verse 14 God tells us that this is truly delighting in the Lord and we will ba able to rise above and ride upon the high places.

Our circumstance may not change, but when we learn to truly delight in Him we learn to rise above those circumstances. When we get our eyes off ourselves and on Him we learn to delight in whatever He has for us – then we truly have great delight!

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