Today’s scripture: Isaiah 36:11-21 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Jeff Miner):
Picture the scene. Judah, the southern remnant of the land of Israel, was under attack from the Assyrians, a dominant regional power. The Assyrians had already overrun several of the best defended cities in Judah (Isaiah 36:1), and now they were ready to turn their attention to the capital city, Jerusalem. The King of Assyria sent a spokesman, i.e., “the Rabshakeh,” to Jerusalem to talk “smack” to the people of the city in hopes of intimidating them into surrender. He said:
Hear the words of the great King of Assyria! . . . [D]o not let [your King] mislead you by saying,
“The Lord will save us.” Has any of the gods of the [other surrounding] nations saved their land
out of the hand of . . . Assyria?”
Sometimes we find ourselves in a similar place in life. We face some great threat, and the voices in our head say, “You’re never going to get through this. You may as well give up. God is not going to deliver you.”
In his book, Welcoming Justice, Charles Marsh tells about a time when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. felt tempted to give up his quest for justice. Here’s what happened:
[In January 1956, Dr. King] returned home around midnight after a long day of organizational meetings. His wife and young daughter were already in bed, and King was eager to join them. But a threatening call — the kind of call he was getting as many as 30 to 40 times a day — interrupted his attempt to get some much-needed rest. When he tried to go back to bed, he could not shake the menacing voice that kept repeating the hateful words in his head.
King got up, made a pot of coffee, and sat down at his kitchen table. With his head buried in his hands, he cried out to God. There in his kitchen in the middle of the night, when he had come to the end of strength, King met the living Christ in an experience that would carry him through the remainder of his life. “I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on,” King later recalled. “He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone… He promised never to leave me, no never alone.”
In the stillness of the Alabama night, the voice of Jesus proved more convincing than the threatening voice of the anonymous caller. The voice of Jesus gave him the courage to press through the tumultuous year of 1956 to the victorious end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. More than that, it gave him a vision for ministry that would drive him for the rest of his life.
Thought For The Day: Never listen to the voices who say, “It’s no use. Give up. God isn’t going to help you.” Despair is not from God.
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.