Isaiah 48:17-18 “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea.”
priv·i·lege noun – a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
Since last week’s post, I’ve continued to contemplate the privileges gained by those who intentionally and faithfully follow Jesus Christ. It makes sense. God, having created human beings, knows what is best for us, what brings true life. Like a river that keeps flowing and waves that keep surging to shore, God continuously brings his peace and well-being to everyone who pays attention to his commands.
It’s not surprising that peace and well-being are in short supply these days. Our society has rejected God and smugly gone its own way, all the while promising utopia. Yet the results have been disastrous: we have wrecked the family, marriage, education, art, language, mental health, peace, innocence, freedom, community, and purpose. In short, we are burning down civilization and defacing everything good. No realm of human life remains unsoiled. There are days when I despair of how ugly and coarse this world has become, how we have methodically ruined everything God intended when he commissioned human beings to fill, subdue, and govern the earth he created.
If God is so powerful, why doesn’t he fix all of this? Why doesn’t he just instantly and magically make things better? He could – and he will one day – but 2 Peter 3:9 is one of several places in Scripture that explain God’s “slowness”: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God patiently waits for us to wake from this self-inflicted fever dream and turn to him for help. Once rescued, he invites us to follow his ways, every day, even when difficult and when it means going against the grain of the world. Without exception, two outcomes have been proven again and again throughout history: Insisting on our own way ultimately leads to alienation, rage, and despair, but God’s path leads to life.
Father, you made us to enjoy you, the earth, and community with one another – if only we would live according to your design. Please awaken this nihilistic, lost, lonely, and despairing world with your transforming forgiveness and love.
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This week: The way to know how God wants you to live is to become intimately familiar with his communication. If you don’t yet have a daily habit of starting your day with Bible reading and prayer, resolve to make this your urgent, life-giving aim. God will give you the discipline to do it. Just ask him. There is nothing that has impacted me for greater good than this simple but consistent habit of seeking God every day in Scripture and prayer. What on earth is holding you back?
Psalm 1:1-2 “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he mediates days and night.”
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