Isaiah 49:1-16 ”How do I do broomstick crochet?” is a question of interest to no-one but a few specialists. “How can I get more joy in my life?” is a question of interest to all of us. The answer is revealed in Isaiah 49. It tells us how every day can be a party day!
Isaiah 42:1-12There are times when we may feel God has forgotten us, or we feel failures because of sin, or we feel despair looking at the state of the world. What does God say to us at such times? “Behold my servant”.
Are you feeling discouraged at the moment? Perhaps weighed down by past failures, or struggling with present difficulties, or worried about future uncertainties. Imagine getting home and finding on your answer-machine or voicemail a personal message of encouragement from God himself to you. That is what we have in this passage!
Most modern people don’t quite get the Bible’s obsession with idolatry. We think of idolatry as an ancient problem for backward people who bowed down to statues, not a relevant one for sophisticated folks like us. But we aren’t beyond idolatry. We simply dress it up in different clothes.
If there were a customer service department in heaven, the phones would often be ringing, and many of the calls would be from God’s people. “Why do you seem so distant? Why has this happened to me? Why have you forgotten me?” This passage is the heavenly response to such complaints.
One discussion forum post declared, “My week sucked, my day sucked, and I’m sick of hearing depressing stuff on the news. So let’s have a thread of happy news”. What good news would you have posted in response? What comfort does the Bible give?
Isaiah 38-39 Ever felt disillusioned? Perhaps with someone you know personally; or with a public figure; or with humanity; or with life; or with yourself? It’s a common enough experience. What is the solution? And what’s it got to do with a king of Judah in the 8th century BC?
Some act as if the devil and demons aren’t real; others attribute every inconvenient circumstance to spiritual warfare – whether it’s a flat tyre, a traffic jam, or a price increase at KFC. What is a biblical approach to spiritual warfare?
Isaiah 34:1-10; Isaiah 35 How does God encourage the spiritually weary to press on, the drowsy to wake up, and the rebellious to turn back? By showing us what he can see but we can’t from our present position – what lies round the corner in eternity.
Isaiah 25-27 Some equate being Christian with ‘The haunting fear that someone somewhere is having a good time’. And as for heaven, that would be plain dull. The reality is that celebration is at the very heart of what it means to be Christian and God’s people are heading for the mother of all parties.
