Say What?”

"He said, "God and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused: make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." Isaiah 6:9-10

This is what God says to Isaiah after Isaiah says, "Here am I, send me." This is the message from God to Isaiah's people and also to us. Isaiah had confessed that he himself was a man of unclean lips and served a people of unclean lips. God symbolically touches his mouth with a live coal from the altar to purify Isaiah so his guilt was removed and his sin was atoned for. What does the message from God in verses 9 and 10 mean? There is a religiosity, a phony spirituality that we are capable of particularly when we have 'heard it all before', and when we are bored with His teaching that causes a callousness or hardening of our hearts toward God. We listen, but we don't take it in, we see it, but we don't wrap our minds around it. After we start to get calloused, we then start to get deaf and sleepy.

God's word should wake us up. God's word should get our attention. Not with theatrics or multimedia or jokes, but with the truth. If we spend a long time shutting it out, we lose our capability to take it in. Very dangerous. I want to see anew and hear afresh. I want to understand and perceive. I don't want to be calloused or dull or deaf or sleepy. It takes discipline to listen and hear, to see and visualize. It takes commitment to plug in and to absorb what God has for me when I study or listen to teaching or read devotionals. Can't we just take a pill or watch a show? Can't we just have a dream and get it? How about osmosis?

God's plan is for us is to listen and see, which means we will have to look and focus. Otherwise we should never ask why we are sick or troubled or discouraged or upset or stuck. The Word of God is an elixir, a vitamin for the spirit, nutrition for the mind. We must desire it, be hungry for it and receive it. If you want to be healed of what ails you, turn to Him and His Word and feed on the truth. Otherwise your reality will be starving for truth and made up of all the other stuff you hear. I will need to force myself to do this and I do. Join me.

Lord give us a hunger for you.
Pastor Fred

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