The First Blast from the Past

This is the first of the posts from the annals of this blog. This was written, I believe in August of 2009.  I hope you enjoy it.  Reading it has encouraged me today---I hope you find meaning in it also.

ISAIAH 45

Treasure Found in Calamity

2"I will go before you and make the rough places smooth;

I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars.

3"I will give you the treasures of darkness

And hidden wealth of secret places,

So that you may know that it is I,

The LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name
6That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun

That there is no one besides Me.

I am the LORD, and there is no other,

7The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well-being and creating calamity;

I am the LORD who does all these. (NASB)

8 Let fall in showers, you heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness [the pure, spiritual, heaven-born possibilities that have their foundation in the holy being of God]; let the earth open, and let them [skies and earth] sprout forth salvation, and let righteousness germinate and spring up [as plants do] together; I the Lord have created it. (AMP)

“What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator.

Does a clay pot argue with its maker?

Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying,

‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’ Does the pot exclaim,

'‘How clumsy can you be?’

10 How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father,

‘Why was I born?’

or if it said to its mother,
‘Why did you make me this way?’” (NLT)


My Comments:
God chose Cyrus, a king who was not one of His “chosen people”…and chose to bless him and give him power and to use him for God’s own purposes. He worked out blessing for His own people by the way He chose to use Cyrus.

God is Sovereign and reigns supreme. We cannot question how He chooses to work. We cannot look at ourselves and ask Him why He made us the way we are. He is God. It is His place to create, empower, and to destroy. It is our place to do His bidding without question. This completely goes against our prideful grain. It goes against our spirit of independence. We fail to understand the fact of our “createdness.”

As a result of our being obedient to yield in this manner and to acknowledge His supremacy and His right to do as He wishes with us, as a result of our being obedient to His call, He will destroy that which holds us in bondage; He will allow us into the depths of His secret places and there we will find great treasure and blessing. Out of the darkness of our lives; out of our physical and mental suffering, He will bring great treasures. This is contingent on our being obedient and submissive to the way in which He has chosen to make and to use us. God uses calamity and difficulty as well as blessing to accomplish His purposes in our lives and on this earth. We have no idea about what He is up to; nor should we pretend or presume we do.

Vs 8 talks about the ways in which God uses the duet of physical circumstance and heavenly purpose to accomplish His will for His creatures and to pour out His benefit to us…sometimes masked in suffering. We do not know Him. He is God and we are not. Let Him use us as He will. Trust yourselves to His wisdom, knowledge and love. The result will be freedom from the captivity of circumstance and freedom from the bitterness of suffering without purpose. It will also be a deeper knowledge of the mysteries of our sovereign God.