Forgiveness

Hi everyone, how are you all?

Realise I haven't posted in a while now. This has been due to a lack of a computer, but I am at a computer now, and I just felt I should share something, because I was reading a question earlier from an atheist, wich was actually a really good one. What they were asking was whether forgiveness from God was more important than forgiveness from the person you have sinned against.

I actually think that for a Christian, the two are intertwined; Can you truly be sorry to God, if you are not sorry to the person that you have wronged? Likewise, as a Christian, can you truly be sorry to the person you have wronged, if you... are not sorry to God. Asking forgiveness and seeking reconciliation is talked about in Matt. 5:23,24. If we don't ask for forgiveness of others, we are displeasing God. To illustrate further, Matt 25:25, says this: '35‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
In a nutshell, if you sin against man, man, you sin against God, therefore if you sin against man, and don't ask for his forgiveness, you also sin against God, and don't ask for his forgiveness.

Johnny Cash

I was watching ‘Walk The Line’ the other night – something I had wanted to do for a long time but never had the chance. It was a fantastic film, and superbly acted, even if I didn’t recognise Elvis until I was told!

As I was watching the film, and his faith was touched upon at various points – such as when the record label guy question’s Cash’s faith in God, I started to ponder more on this side of his personality, and as the film moved on I started to build much more of a picture, and realised that in many ways Johnny Cash optimizes the Christian struggle; He struggle’s to deal with the many issue’s he has, and struggle’s to put lean on God, rather than on the drugs, and temporary solutions of the world, which actually aid in his continuing downward spiral. He hurts just about everyone he knows, drives his wife away, loses access to his kids, wrecks his career.

Then things begin to change, and God provides a light in the form of an intervention by his future wife, June, and his family. In June’s words, ‘God has given you a second chance to make this right. This is your chance’.

It just seems to me that there is probably a part in all of us as Christians who can relate to this. If we are honest, don’t we all have experiences which are not so dissimilar? But no matter how badly we mess up, God always gives us a second chance..,. and a third…. and a fourth… Even in the most hopeless situations, he never gives up on us. Johnny Cash messes up allot in his life, he is by no means perfect, sinless. But he has a relationship with God and he is saved by that.

I would bet that actually he knew more about what it meant to be a Christian than many other Christians do. I remember when a record label guy says ‘The boy’s don’t want to hear you tryin’ to cheer up a bunch of murderers.’, Johnny’s reply is ‘Well they’re not Christians then’.

So what can we learn from Johnny Cash? That no matter where we are on our Christian journey – no matter how profoundly we may ‘understand’ what it means to be a Christian, we are always going to have this struggle. We are always going to make mistakes. But we can also see that God continues to forgive us, pick us up, and give us second chances.

I think that this song illustrates Johnny’s Christian ‘message’ beautifully.

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A Burglary, A Fire, and a Job. All in a day’s work.

Saturday was one of those days when everything happens. I guess really though, for the point of view of this story, I must start a bit further back than this; One of the things that I have become acutely aware of the last few days, is how crazy this summer is going to be. I guess in a way I had put off dealing with it, because in a lot of ways it is actually quite scary. By the time my course restarts in September, I will have produced my first show, Performed at the Edinburgh Festival for the first time, and moved house. This entails me being in Cheltenham to rehearse for the Edinburgh Festival, in Canterbury (A five hour coach journey) To rehearse for my show, having somewhere to stay in Cheltenham, and having a Job.

I remember Thursday night having a real worrying session. I was actually watching a Matt Chandler video at the time, with him talking about how the Lord tells you not to worry, and how you should put everything in the Lord. Sometimes no matter how much you know it is true that you should be doing this, it just doesn’t seem to be that helpful advice does it? You think to yourself ‘No, no, no, I’ve got to hold onto this one.’ Sometimes you go even further and start thinking ‘Jesus WANTS me to keep thinking about this, even though I’m just going round in circles in my head, and really not achieving anything with it.’

Anyway so eventually it got to the stage where I thought ‘You know what, I’m probably not going to stop worrying about this, but I can at least get the Lord involved. So I prayed. I would say that I prayed for most of the rest of the night, in one form or another. I would love to say that my prayer was some grand peace of poetry, but it was actually a far more desperate ‘LORD PLEASE HELP ME TO FIND A JOB’, with my hands clenched together like to clamps. I was far more like a young child clinging for life to his mother, ‘PLEASE GET ME THAT GAME, I NEEEEEED THAT GAME!!!’

The next day, I phoned a nightclub in Cheltenham, and they said they needed glass collectors, and to pop in the following day.

So that night, I’m now worrying ‘what if I get this job? What am I gonna do?? How am I gonna do this job, go to Edinburgh, and do my own show back in Kent?? What have I let myself in for? I’m gonna have to concentrate all the rehearsals for my show into a short space of time. How is that gonna work? Will anyone be able to do the show like that? Will the show be any good even?

Then I remembered something which I had heard in church from a guy called David Gate. ‘We all wing it.’ Winging it is a part of life. I realised that I was just gonna have to make a decision and go with it, rather than procrastinating over it. I realised that I was gonna have to just make it work. This was the best option I had, and I was going to have to go with it, and that there was always going to be a certain amount of blindness about the situation, but I was going to have to go with it, to jump in the waves, and let them carry me.

How was I going to go tell these potential employers that I was going to need all this time off? I decided to take the advice of Matt Chandler, and not worry about it. I would judge the situation at the interview, and take it from there.

So onto Saturday. My plan for the day: Go get a job, then meet a friend in town, come back to mine to get ready and then go to a party. Well, two parties – one after the other. First thing’s first, the job interview. I got into town, stood outside the nightclub pretty nervously, partly hoping that the manager wouldn’t be there and I could go home, but mostly thinking ‘No, I need this job, and I need to start it as quickly as possible.’

After waiting for a while, the manager arrived, and I had my interview, which went very very well, and praise the Lord, he told me that I had pretty much got the job, and I just needed to come back on Monday to see the other managers.

So I went home, then went back out to meet my friend. On the way down there, spot a fire, so have to call the fire brigade. Actually it was just a bin fire, but to be honest, the area I live in, so full of drugs that it could have easily caused a massive chemical fire! Actually what got me about the bin fire, was everyone just seemed to be walking right on passed it, without even thinking to try and deal with it. To use biblical terms, ‘walking by on the other side’.

Anyway eventually the fire brigade came, I was able to leave. I met my friend. I had phoned my friend to tell her I was held up by this fire. It turned out what she heard was ‘held up, fire, bus, bomb’, so she was understandably a little scared!

Party was fine, me and my housemate came back home before going out again for the second one, which was at a nightclub. On the way out, I noticed some kids staring at us from across the road. ‘I bet they try and break in’ I said to him, as we walked into town.

The person who’s party it was, was a friend of my housemates. It was a really good night out actually. So good we didn’t get back till four in the morning, and we were more than a little drunk. We got out of the taxi, said goodbye to the others, and opened the porch door. Immediately we noticed that something wasn’t right. The door from the porch into the house was open.

‘Okay, that’s odd, this door is open’, my housemate said. We went in further, checking all over for signs that someone had been in the house. When we got into the living room, we saw the back door was wide open. Did we leave it open? We wandered. ‘Looks like nothing’s been taken’, my housemate said. ‘Yeah’, I replied. We were lucky.

Then it hit me. My laptop. Where was my laptop? I went back into the living room, where I had left it. It was gone. It had been stolen. I looked everywhere for it, but nothing. It had definitely been stolen, and we had definitely been burgled, so I phoned the police. My memory cast back to the boys across the road, and my words at the time, ‘I bet they try and break in!’.

I remember being very calm about it – something which has continued since then. ‘No point worrying about it, or getting upset about it’, I said to my housemate, ‘That won’t solve anything’. Looks like I had learned something from my experiences the previous days! I remember at the time as well just opening my Bible, and it turning to psalms which just helped me to express and sort out how I was feeling at the time so well, but at the end of it all, I kind of felt sorry for those who had broken in. I just thought ‘they risked there freedom for one piddly laptop? How desperate must they be? But it’s worth remembering as well, that – as easy as it would be to hate these kids in one way or another, are they not just the same as us? God views all sin as the same, and we are all sinners. It is important to remember that no matter how much someone sins against us, we need to try to hate the sin, not the sinner, because actually we are no better, or no worse than them, based on sin. You can only be made righteous by Jesus.

This weekend has been so full of experience, good and bad. But it is possible to get through anything with God – with his support. With him showing his understanding. With him helping you to fly through the hard times, and grounding you through the good. He always watches over and looks after us. No matter how many things may fly at you at once, how much you may feel like you are winging it, or how badly people treat each other at times, Jesus is the true path, and is the light in the dark to follow.

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Isaiah 57 Series: God-Idol Part 1.

 ³ “But you—come here, you witches’ children,
      you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes!
 ⁴ Whom do you mock,
      making faces and sticking out your tongues?
      You children of sinners and liars!
 ⁵ You worship your idols with great passion
      beneath the oaks and under every green tree.
   You sacrifice your children down in the valleys,
      among the jagged rocks in the cliffs.
 ⁶ Your gods are the smooth stones in the valleys.
      You worship them with liquid offerings and grain offerings.
   They, not I, are your inheritance.
      Do you think all this makes me happy?
 ⁷ You have committed adultery on every high mountain.
      There you have worshiped idols
      and have been unfaithful to me.
 ⁸ You have put pagan symbols
      on your doorposts and behind your doors.
   You have left me
      and climbed into bed with these detestable gods.
   You have committed yourselves to them.
      You love to look at their naked bodies.
 ⁹ You have given olive oil to Molech^[a]
      with many gifts of perfume.
   You have traveled far,
      even into the world of the dead,^[b]
      to find new gods to love.
 ¹⁰ You grew weary in your search,
      but you never gave up.
   Desire gave you renewed strength,
      and you did not grow weary.

Immediately here we see the focus changes from the men of God who are being rescued from the world they are IN, to the idolatrers who are OF the world.
The first thing that sticks out to me is this idea of being MOCKED wich appears in verse 4. It points out that the actions of these people is actually mocking to God. I would say that if this verse were to be paraphrased another way, it would say 'Who are you to mock God? You represent everything that is wrong, you give yourselves to sins and lies.'
It then goes on to point out what is wrong with the way they are living. This is important to us, because I think we are all guilty of many of these things - even as Christians. Here is the list, and in brackets I will put an example of how this could apply to us:
Worshiping Idols with a passion (sports stars, celebrities, etc)
Making sacrifices to them (paying money to them, buying the football shirts, etc)
'Your God's are the smooth stones of the valley' (substitute stones for something more modern - i.e a premiership footballer)
'They, not I, am your inheritance' (Instead of getting God, the gifts of the spirit, eternal life, a seat next to the Lord in Heaven, you're inheritence is... Wayne Rooney)
'You have committed adultery on every high mountain.
      There you have worshiped idols
      and have been unfaithful to me.' (When you worship , for example, Wayne Rooney, you are actually commiting adultery with him against God. Nuff said)
'You have put pagan symbols
      on your doorposts and behind your doors.' (Posters of celebrities, etc)
'You have left me
      and climbed into bed with these detestable gods.' (gods = celebrities)
'You have committed yourselves to them.
      You love to look at their naked bodies.'
'You have travelled far... to find new God's to Love' (X-Factor, American Idol, America's Next Top Model, etc)

Just something to think about. Although this was aimed at people living Well over 2000 years ago, are we not just as guilty today? Something to think about...

Isaiah 57 Series: The Blessed Death the World Disregards

In the last blog we put the book of Isaiah as a whole into context, as a way of better understanding Isaiah 57. No we are going to start to unpack it a little bit more, and this blog is going to focus on the first two verses.
¹ Good people pass away;
      the godly often die before their time.
      But no one seems to care or wonder why.
   No one seems to understand
      that God is protecting them from the evil to come.
² For those who follow godly paths
      will rest in peace when they die.
Personally I don’t understand why Christians don’t draw on these two verses more often; the amount of times I have been asked why people die by Non-Christians, and why God seems to desert his people, sometimes in seemingly the most horrific ways, ‘leaving them’ to die – well, this straight away provides an answer – People of God often die as a way of God protecting them from the evil to come.
Just on that subject, it often amazes me that Atheists in particular try to use God letting Christians die as some kind of sign that he must be an unjust God if he exists. I personally don’t see anything wrong with leaving this planet to go to heaven! If Heaven is this perfect place, where we are made right, and all pain ends, then surely leaving this fallen planet to get there is not a particularly unfair deal!
If heaven truly exists, then I don’t know about you, but when I get there, as hard as it may have seemed on earth, that process of death on this planet is going to seem very much worth it! I must make it clear here that I do not in any case condone suicide. We all know that this is wrong, the Bible says that it is wrong, Christianity is pro-life.
But if you are a follower of Jesus, then death is a bad thing in the sense that because of sin, we have to go through it – but it is surely worth it to get to the promised land. We as Christians have all of that to look forward to – it is promised to us!
God abandons us by letting us be reborn in Heaven? God would be abandoning us by leaving us here! According to the Bible, we should all be condemned to Hell. But because Jesus Christ died for our sins, we as Christians are saved.
By the way, this is all sentiment echoed by the Apostle Paul, when he says this:
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (in this life)
                are not worthy to be compared with the glory
                which shall be revealed in us (in Heaven)." (Romans 8:18)
But going back to those first two verses of Isaiah 57, it seems fairly clear to me that this first verse is saying that people of God are taken out of compassion, so that they may not be subjected to, tormented, and tempted by evil any longer. That peace may be ours. I personally think that no matter what happens in this world, Jesus offers us the hope of Heaven, and this is something that we should be forever greatfull for. He doesn’t have to offer it to us, but because of his grace and compassion, he does. If we wish to accept it.
But, by implication, the verse suggests something else as well; ‘For those who follow God, will rest in peace when they die’. implies a contrast – that for those who do not follow God, life will be very different…
More next time. (available from Tuesday 24th May 2011)

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Faith and Princes

Had a long rehearsal day today, and new it was going to be long.  I spent a large amount of the bus journey reading my new book, 'The Authentic Gospel of Jesus'. It is a fascinating book. Just to take the blurb off the back - 'Who was the real Jesus? What was the original message of the charismatic Jewish healer and moralist who changed the world? Renowned biblical scholar Geza Vermes distils a lifetime's knowledge to examine every saying attributed to Jesus, scraping aside millennia of Christian tradition and writing to return to the true teachings of the man behind the Messiah.'
The first chapter of the book examines all of his commands, and what i have realized more than ever, is how faith underpins them all; 'Your faith has healed you', - every healing he says happens because of the persons faith - their belief that it will be cured.
Of course Jesus also tells us that 'If you have so much as a mustard seed of faith, then if you ask that mountain to move, then it shall move'.
But how often do we truly put our faith in God, for this to happen?
I know that I find it so hard to let go of certain things to God. Some times I try to do things too much on my own, because - lets be honest, I don't trust him with it. Because of a lack of faith.
But actually, it's not because I don't trust HIM with it, it is because I wouldn't trust ANYBODY with it. It isn't because he is not trust worthy, rather because we don't like losing control, and we think that - possibly because of our experiences with other people, 'if you want something done, then you should do it yourself'. Maybe this is the case when it comes to people, but God is not a person.
Can we truly say that we would be able to do it better than God? This God who created the universe down to the very smallest detail?
But he doesn't know what I want! This God who knows our hearts better than we know our own first names?!! He knows what we want better than we do!
Back to the bus journey. I also spent about 10 minutes or so praying, asking what God wanted of me that day. What I kept getting was that he wanted me to step up to the mark more - that I was a Prince, and I needed to start acting like one, and believing it. It then got me thinking - isn't this the same for all of us? We are brothers of Jesus, and he is the King of Kings. Therefore, we must be Princes.
And the people we call Royalty on this planet - there is really no difference between us and them; Scientists say that there is about 2% genetic difference between every healthy human being on the planet. Therefore that is how similar we are to every prince and princess on the planet - we are 98% the same.
We are all built to be Royalty. Lets start believing it. Let’s start believing that anything is possible, because with God, it is.

This song says it all perfectly.

You Never Let Go–Matt Redman

 

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Isaiah 57 Series: Introduction

Ok, I have decided to try my hand at a little mini-series. The subject of this first mini series is going to be Isaiah 57. For those of you who are interested, this came about through asking God through prayer to give me a chapter. As I was doing this, I opened the Bible, and Isaiah 57 was what it opened to. The interesting thing about this is that, having not read Isaiah 57 before, I will be viewing it with very fresh eyes.
Before we read Chapter 57, I personally value putting parts of the Bible that I read into context. The Grace Institute: Isaiah In Context, is a fantastic resource for this, but for those of you who don’t have time to read this, I will bullet point what I consider to be the most important points it makes.
- The book of Isaiah is the longest book in the longest book in the old testament.
- It is the most quoted old testament book in the new testament – reason alone to take the book seriously.
-  In the Hebrew Bible, the book is found in the second section – the Prophets, the primary purpose of which was to proclaim God’w word to people, and fore-tell the future.
- The prophets were all based in Isreal and Judah. They were from all walks of life, and weren’t ‘pawns of the monarchy’.
- Isaiah 1 says this on the context Isaiah: ‘These visions concerning Judah and Jerusalem came to Isaiah son of Amoz during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah -- all kings of Judah’ (NLV)
- Around this time ten northern tribes rebelled against King David, meaning Isreal was divided into to kingdoms – Israel and Judah.
- At the time, both were insignificant in world terms, acting as pawns for the world’s super-powers, such as Assyria. However, Israel and Judah both experienced brief rises in influence and power, due to political turmoil and epidemics in Assyria. At this time, Israel was ruled by King Jeroboam II.
- Meanwhile, King Uzziah ruled Judah. he followed God and lead Judah into peace and prosperity not seen since the reign of King Solomon. However, he contracted Leprosy, and his son jotham ruled in his place.
-When King Jeroboam died, Israel fell into political chaos; Four of the next five kings were assassinated in military coups. Also, Israel faced new threat as Assyria regained its strength.
- Under the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, Assyria, conquered almost all of the middle east.
- “God warned Israel through the prophets that unless they repented of their idolatry, that Assyria would destroy them (2 Kings 17:13-18). Yet the people did not listen. In 722, Tiglath-Pileser's son, Shalmaneser V, discovered that Israel was plotting with Egypt to rebel against him. So he destroyed Samaria, and carried away all the people of Israel into captivity.” – Israel ignored the prophets of God and was destroyed.
- Under the rule of King Hezekiah, while Israel ignored God’s prophets and was destroyed, Judah heeded their words and experienced a national revival. Hezekiah destroyed the idolswhich were tripping up the Jews, and trusted God.
- “The most telling example of Hezekiah's trust in God came in 701 BC, when King Sennacherib of Assyria launched an invasion of Palestine. Sennacherib had faced the Egyptian army in a major battle in the plains of Judah and won. With this victory under his belt, Sennacherib headed to Jerusalem to lay siege to the capital city. In this story, told both in 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37-39, Hezekiah does not surrender, but heeding the advice of the prophet Isaiah, leads the nation in prayer and fasting. The Assyrian army is stricken by a plague from God and returns to Nineveh.”
- After his death, Judah went into a downward spiral of civil war and money problems. Meanwhile, Babylon’s power and influence was rising, and became the new dominant empire after defeating Egypt at the battle of Carchemish (605 B.C). Babylon would be used by God to bring judgement to an unrepentant Judah.
- The Jews were exiled to Babylon from 605 to 536 B.C, when King Cyrus of Persia Conquered Babylon, and gave permission for the Jews to return to their homeland.
- “The exile accomplished its purpose, as the worship of foreign gods would never again take place in Judah.”
- In Isaiah’s day, most King’s of Judah followed God (Yahweh).
- Yahweh is a monotheistic God, meaning their is only one – no separate God’s. This is something that was unique for Isaiah’s day.
- Yahweh insists that you must not worship any other God’s:
Exodus 20 says
3 "Do not worship any other gods besides me. 4 "Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. 5 You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god! I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.”
- Jeroboam deliberately perverted the worship of God, building his own temples, so that his people wouldn’t have to visit Judah. he also built to Gold Calves – therefore breaking the second commandment.
- The next major perversion was that Israelites started worshiping Baal – an ancient Canaanite God of fertility. Worship of this God heavily involved sexual acts.
- The next major perversion which Isaiah faced was when King Ahaz of Judah ordered the tearing down of an alter to God (which had been given to Moses by Yahweh himself), to be replaced by an Assyrian design, in order to win favour with Tiglath Pileser.
- In 2 Kings, we learn that Ahaz sacrificed to many other Gods – even sacrificing his own son at one point.
With all of this in mind it is probably a good idea now to read Isaiah 57, so here is the NLT version:

Isaiah 57

¹ Good people pass away;
      the godly often die before their time.
      But no one seems to care or wonder why.
   No one seems to understand
      that God is protecting them from the evil to come.
² For those who follow godly paths
      will rest in peace when they die.

Idolatrous Worship Condemned

³ “But you—come here, you witches’ children,
      you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes!
⁴ Whom do you mock,
      making faces and sticking out your tongues?
      You children of sinners and liars!
⁵ You worship your idols with great passion
      beneath the oaks and under every green tree.
   You sacrifice your children down in the valleys,
      among the jagged rocks in the cliffs.
⁶ Your gods are the smooth stones in the valleys.
      You worship them with liquid offerings and grain offerings.
   They, not I, are your inheritance.
      Do you think all this makes me happy?
⁷ You have committed adultery on every high mountain.
      There you have worshiped idols
      and have been unfaithful to me.
⁸ You have put pagan symbols
      on your doorposts and behind your doors.
   You have left me
      and climbed into bed with these detestable gods.
   You have committed yourselves to them.
      You love to look at their naked bodies.
⁹ You have given olive oil to Molech^[a]
      with many gifts of perfume.
   You have traveled far,
      even into the world of the dead,^[b]
      to find new gods to love.
¹⁰ You grew weary in your search,
      but you never gave up.
   Desire gave you renewed strength,
      and you did not grow weary.
¹¹ “Are you afraid of these idols?
      Do they terrify you?
   Is that why you have lied to me
      and forgotten me and my words?
   Is it because of my long silence
      that you no longer fear me?
¹² Now I will expose your so-called good deeds.
      None of them will help you.
¹³ Let’s see if your idols can save you
      when you cry to them for help.
   Why, a puff of wind can knock them down!
      If you just breathe on them, they fall over!
   But whoever trusts in me will inherit the land
      and possess my holy mountain.”

God Forgives the Repentant

¹⁴ God says, “Rebuild the road!
      Clear away the rocks and stones
      so my people can return from captivity.”
¹⁵ The high and lofty one who lives in eternity,
      the Holy One, says this:
   “I live in the high and holy place
      with those whose spirits are contrite and humble.
   I restore the crushed spirit of the humble
      and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.
¹⁶ For I will not fight against you forever;
      I will not always be angry.
   If I were, all people would pass away—
      all the souls I have made.
¹⁷ I was angry,
      so I punished these greedy people.
   I withdrew from them,
      but they kept going on their own stubborn way.
¹⁸ I have seen what they do,
      but I will heal them anyway!
      I will lead them.
   I will comfort those who mourn,
¹⁹ bringing words of praise to their lips.
   May they have abundant peace, both near and far,”
      says the Lord, who heals them.
²⁰ “But those who still reject me are like the restless sea,
      which is never still
      but continually churns up mud and dirt.
²¹ There is no peace for the wicked,”
      says my God.
Hear is an audio version from the King James bible for you to meditate on:

Isaiah 57 KJV

In the next part of the series, we will start to unpack the text a bit more, but I want to leave you with these questions:
What is your first impression of Isaiah 57? What would you say are the themes running through? What are the most powerful, tender, scary, and hopeful messages that Isaiah 57 gives you? How does it apply to today?

Click here for part 2

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