Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:10b
"I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."
(Spoken to Israelites who were living in exile,
banned from their own land and taken by force
into a foreign and godless land of Babylon,
the Lord vows His faithfulness and provision for them.
Our promise for today is the same.

Even though we may have situations in our lives today
that have removed us from our place of comfort and familiarity,
the Lord has committed to us His presence, His strength,
His help, His faithfulness, and His provision.
And when He makes such a commitment to us,
it is not like men and women who make commitments to each other
and then break those commitments.
This promise is from the Righteous One Whose Word is true,
Whose commitment is real,
and Whose covenant promise stands for all ages.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:10a
"So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God."
(The Lord is speaking to His people in exile in Babylon,
a place of great challenge and difficulty,
reminding them that even in hardship, He with them.
As God's people look around at the very real plight of their situation,
as they look at each other in dismay,
the Lord reminds them to look to Him
and to His provision even in the place of exile.
The I AM as the answer to whatever their need is
is present with them even in Babylon.
Even in our Babylon of hardship today,
in our place of discomfort and even exile,
the Lord is with us and we have nothing to fear
even in the challenges facing us today.
The I AM as the answer to whatever our need is today

is present with us even in our situation today.
Because of the very fact that God Almighty has chosen us
and promised to be with us is reason enough for us not to fear.
Where the I AM is, there is no room for fear or dismay.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:9b
"I said, ‘You are My servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
(The Great and Mighty I AM, God Most High, the Lord God Jehovah,
the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent Lord God Almighty speaks,
and His words tell us that He has claimed us as His Own,
that He has singled us out and chosen us,
that He has staked a claim on us.
What's even more amazing,
even when we persist in our waywardness,
even when we persist in our rebelliousness,
even when we persist in our unfaithfulness,
even when we persist in our adultery against Him,
even when we persist in idolatry,
even when we persist in our sin,
He does not reject us, but rather He maintains His commitment with us,
His unbroken commitment to us.
What's even more amazing is the call to which He has invited us.
He not only has determined to claim us as His Own,
He has chosen us to be His ambassadors, to even be His inheritance.
He loves us so deeply that He calls us His special messenger to His world,
to be His envoy, to be His representative on earth.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:8-9a
“But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham My friend,
(The Lord still calls out each of us by name,
declaring that He has chosen us, that He has set us apart,
declaring that we belong to the line of His chosen people
that we, unlike those who put their trust in other gods, belong to Him.)
I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you."
(Like Abraham whom the Lord called out of a foreign country,
whom He guided into and blessed with a land of his own,
the Lord still calls us today out of the place where we have set up our lives,
trying to survive and flourish out of our own strength and endeavors,
and into a place in Him, Who is the Promised Land for us today.
Not one of us has been so far away, so far removed, so lost,
that He could not find us and call us into His purposes.
No matter where He finds us, no matter what circumstances He finds us in,
no matter how far astray we have wandered,
He calls us out of those far, hidden corners of our past,
He calls us out of our present wandering
and into His presence and into a life of redemption and hope and victory.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:7
The metalworker encourages the goldsmith,
and the one who smoothes with the hammer
spurs on the one who strikes the anvil.
One says of the welding, “It is good.”
The other nails down the idol so it will not topple.
(How foolish we are!
As far back as Adam and Eve who fellowshipped with God Himself,
who walked together with their Creator in the Garden,
yet foolishly yielded to the temptation to try "be like God",
to do their own "god-like" thing according to their own design and devices,
we, too, still engage in our foolish and futile attempts
to be a god to ourselves and to make our own gods.
As we persistently hammer out our idols
and prop them up with our time and devotion to them,
we hope that somehow they will endow us with favor
and impact us with power over situations we confront.
Today, the Lord calls us to open our eyes to see
how we have formed idols in our lives,
how we worship at the altar of things and people and ideas,
knowing full well that anything or anyone
who comes between us and God is an idol,
how we allow ourselves to give greater attention to them than we give to God,
knowing full well that anything or anyone
to whom we give greater attention and devotion than to God is an idol.
We bend and form these things and people and ideas
into idols of our own making.
Today, the Lord calls us to come into His presence,
to reason together with Him, the only Wise God,
to pour out our needs before Him,
and to seek Him for guidance and victory.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:5-6
The islands have seen it and fear; the ends of the earth tremble.
(The "it" here refers to the power and majesty of Almighty God.
When the nations of this earth stand before God,
they tremble because they see at once their inferiority and powerlessness.
In the same way, the "nations" in our lives,
the challenging situations that face us today
also are vulnerable and exposed when the Lord confronts them.
When we actually focus on the Lord, on His truths,
when we see the power of God Almighty revealed to us,
we see our own inability to effect control over these "nations"
and the foolishness of not trusting in Him.)
They approach and come forward;
they help each other and say to their companions, “Be strong!”
(Yet, too often, we try to proceed in our own strength and understanding.
We even encourage each other in rebelliousness
by running after the ways of the world with each other,
by seeking strength in relationships, or material goods, or titles,
or human understanding and intellect,
or by trying to wield our own control over ourselves or others or situations.
Our strength today comes only from the Lord
Who is our strength in weakness.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:1b
"Let the nations renew their strength!
(The Lord summons us to strengthen ourselves
and to lay out our reasoning and what we think about Him,
to come before Him with our concerns and questions.
He is inviting us to enter into a dialogue with Him
concerning whether He is able,
whether He is powerful enough to meet the challenges we daily face,
whether He is greater than the idols
to which we so often turn when we are in crisis
and to list our reasons as to why these idols are superior to Jehovah God—
such idols as exercising our own control over situations,
or depending on material resources,
or yielding to a sense of helplessness and martyrdom,
or being consumed by fear or anger or bitterness.)
Let them come forward and speak;
let us meet together at the place of judgment."
(Using the metaphor of the forum of a courtroom,
the Lord calls us to engage Him in an argument to discover truth.
The debate is centered on why we should trust the Lord to save us
or whether the gods we serve in the world are more powerful to save us.
What a picture of mercy as the Lord summons us
to pour out our heart's cry before Him.
As we stand in His Presence today,
He reveals to us His willingness today to entertain our concerns and questions
and to once again prove Himself strong on our behalf!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:1b
"Let the nations renew their strength!
(The Lord summons us to strengthen ourselves
and to lay out our reasoning and what we think about Him,
to come before Him with our concerns and questions.
He is inviting us to enter into a dialogue with Him
concerning whether He is able,
whether He is powerful enough to meet the challenges we daily face,
whether He is greater than the idols
to which we so often turn when we are in crisis
and to list our reasons as to why these idols are superior to Jehovah God—
such idols as exercising our own control over situations,
or depending on material resources,
or yielding to a sense of helplessness and martyrdom,
or being consumed by fear or anger or bitterness.)
Let them come forward and speak;
let us meet together at the place of judgment."
(Using the metaphor of the forum of a courtroom,
the Lord calls us to engage Him in an argument to discover truth.
The debate is centered on why we should trust the Lord to save us
or whether the gods we serve in the world are more powerful to save us.
What a picture of mercy as the Lord summons us
to pour out our heart's cry before Him.
As we stand in His Presence today,
He reveals to us His willingness today to entertain our concerns and questions
and to once again prove Himself strong on our behalf!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 41:1a
“Be silent before Me, you islands!"
(In His unending outreach to mankind,
the Lord God Almighty invites us to come before Him,
first to pay homage to Him Who is above all the earth and over all the heavens
and to contemplate His majestic and awesome power and might.
Today, He calls us, invites us, to stand in silence in His presence.
When we are beckoned into the Holy Place where God dwells,
we cannot help but contemplate the wonder of His presence,
speechless, without words to convey His majesty and holiness.
That is a good place to be: a place where our eyes are completely focused on God
and not on ourselves or on our own, at times, seeming impossible, concerns.
When we look into the very Presence of God Himself,
our challenges and worries fade in the light of His presence,
a light that reminds us of His desire to impact our lives with His presence.
Today, He calls us to be silent before Him and focus on Him.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:31b
They will soar on wings like eagles;
(We who put our trust in the Lord transcend
the normal limits of our situations
because the Lord Himself causes us to rise up
and soar on powerful and forceful wings buoyed by His power.
Like an eagle, we are not bound to the earth and its restrictions.
We are lifted by our trust in God to heights that overcome.)

they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

(As we draw on the Lord and on His strength,
we run and walk, not in our own strength and power,
but in the limitless capacity of God in us.
In Christ, today, we can do all things
through Him Who strengthens us!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:30-31a
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
(Even the strongest and fittest among us,
even those who have the most impressive reservoir of inner resources
eventually expend all their talents and skills,
come to the end of their abilities,
and have to yield to human limits of stamina and strength.
Though we may act as if we are indestructible at times,
determination and resolve and willpower cannot always sustain us.)
but those who hope in the Lord  will renew their strength.
(But, the Lord, the covenant-making, personal Jehovah God,
the One Who has committed Himself to us,
Who has declared Himself to be our God, endues us with His strength.
This is the difference for us who belong to the Lord.
Where our hope comes from is from the Lord,
from Him Who is an enduring and endless source of power and might,
like a strong right arm Who comes to our defense
to protect and renew us even in the hopelessness of impossible circumstances.
Today where we are weak and unable is the exact place
where the Lord manifests His strength in and through us!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:29

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

(What a reminder of the Lord's infusion and provision

of strength and stamina and endurance when we are in need.
Even in His great and awesome power,
His concern is for us, the weak and weary.
Isaiah isn't just speaking to the Israelites casually in a vacuum without need.

God's people have been driven out of their land and exiled to Babylon.

Here, in the very midst of trial and tribulation and exile,

the Lord is declaring to His people,

even in the midst of their exile and hardship,

that He provides to them His very strength,
His limitless strength to endure and to overcome.

Today, in the weariness and hardships of the challenges that we face,

the Lord again proclaims to us His provision of strength and power.

Even, and especially, when we are weak and weary in our Babylonian exile,

even when we have been driven out of our comfort level

and have lost our sense of belonging and well-being,

the Lord reminds us His strength is made perfect in our weakness,

that when we are weak, His strength is perfected in us today,

that He increases in us as we and our own inner resources decrease.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:28b
He will not grow tired or weary,
(This Holy, Majestic, Sovereign, Awesome, Almighty God we serve
does not fall into the inadequacies to which we are susceptible.
Though we often grow tired and weary,
though we lose our focus,
though we grow discouraged and disheartened,
though we give up,
our God is the One Who never wearies Himself or gets tired,
One Who never tires of us,
One Who never forsakes us because of our constant failures,
One Who never gets worn out with our endless needs and inadequacies.)
and His understanding no one can fathom.
(His omniscience sets Him apart
from anything we know and extends far beyond
what we can know or comprehend or figure out or see in our circumstances.
He knows the end before the beginning, the hidden, the unseen,
the covered, the unknowable, the future, the past, the present.
He is All-Knowing.
He even knows our weakest vulnerabilities and our deepest sins
and yet He doesn't cast us aside on the trash heap.
Instead, He lovingly gathers us to Himself
reminding us that His mercies for us are new every day of our lives.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:28a
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
(Incredulously, Isaiah calls out to us to remind us of Who our God is.
Even in the midst of our hard times and trials,
when it might be easy to lose sight of Him Whom we serve,
when, then, in fact, it is even more vital
that we remind ourselves of Who God really is,
the prophet's questions still ring out to us today.)
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
(We have to remember Who we serve, Who our God is,
not a god just a cut above a human being
or even a specialized and modified human being,
not a "jazzed-up" human being reminiscent of a comic-book super hero,
but a God Who is “Other” than we are,
a God Who is beyond anything or anyone
we could ever humanly imagine with our finite minds,
a “Forever” God who was and is and is to come,
the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Magnificent, Awesome Creator God.
When we remember these truths about the Lord,
then our hardships today take on an entirely different hue,
and the way we address these hardships is entirely different
as we look to Him Who is the Author and Finisher of our faith!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:27
Why do you complain, Jacob?
(Yet today, like Jacob, like Israel of old,
we still lift our grumbling voices in protest to the God Who created us,
objecting to His ways in our lives,
objecting to our perceived mistreatment and disregard by Him.)
Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
(Our complaint is often rooted in unbelief,
in the notion that He is not responsive,
that He won't act in ways that we think are appropriate and needed,
that He doesn't really care, that He intervenes in the lives of others,
but refuses to intercede on our behalf.
The very fact that Father God allows us to make our complaint to Him
is proof enough of His love for us,
that He invites us to pour out our heart's cry to Him
proof enough that He grants us favor.
Today, He reminds us that our ways are not hidden from Him,
that our cause is not disregarded by Him.
He reminds us today that He cares about
the most trivial and insignificant characteristics that identify us,
even to knowing how many hairs are on our head,
that nothing escapes His knowing, and that He is present
in the deepest and most intimate places in our lives.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:26b
He Who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
(As a father knows the name and attributes of each of own,
as a shepherd knows each of his flock,
Almighty Creator God knows each piece and particle of His creation
and each attribute by which it is identified.
Here is another evidence of His infinite omniscience.
Just as He calls forth each star by name,
so today He calls each one of us by name,
having uniquely created and knit together each of us individually
to come forth at His Word to fulfill His purposes.)
Because of His great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
(Because Almighty Creator God has allotted
each piece of creation a particular assignment in His plan
and because He has given each one
whatever is necessary to carry out that assignment,
all creation responds to His design and does the work He has spoken into it.
Today, in our own lives, He has created the unique individual we are,
He has called us by name,
and He has provided the means by which we are able to respond to Him
and do the work which He has spoken over us.
Here is another evidence of His infinite love for us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:26a
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
(With no more effort it takes to mouth His spoken Word,
Almighty Creator God spoke the heavens into being,
along with all that is within them,
stretching as far as the universe extends into infinity.
Here is another evidence of His eternal omnipotence.
The God of Creation gives us the very first words in all of recorded history,
and they are creative words, words of creation,
words that bring order out of chaos,
form out of nothingness, light out of darkness.
Today, the Lord is still the same as at the dawn of creation.
As we lift our eyes to the heavens and ponder the God Who created them,
acknowledging Him as their source and Him as their author,
He speaks the same creative words over us and into us
as He creates us anew today in Him and in His salvation.
He speaks into our lives today
to bring order out of our confusion,
to bring structure out of our emptiness,
and to bring the light of His presence into the darkness of our lives.
The God Who created the heavens
is the God Who lovingly speaks new life into us today!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:25
“To whom will you compare Me?
Or who is My equal?” says the Holy One.
(In contrast to the sometime idols in our lives to whom we give our worship,
the Lord challenges us to compare their power with His, their presence with His.
The idols we adore are often those
of bitterness against others, ourselves, or God
or fear of outcomes over which we have no control
or being critical and negative in the name of being rational and intellectual,
or trying to perform to win status and others' approval,
or attempting to control others and events in our lives
to the exclusion of the One Who is in control of them.
Despite our faithful worship at these altars,
these idols give back nothing except the rewards
of deeper wounds, bondage, confusion, and greater blindness.
Despite what we may think or how we may act,
God alone deserves our praise and worship.
No other power or force in the heavens or on earth
is equal to the God Who reigns supreme.
Today, this God lovingly invites us to focus our praise in Him
because He always has our best interests at heart.
Today, this God Whom we can trust deserves our praise,
not because He needs it, but because He knows
worshipping Him benefits us for whom He cares and loves deeply.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:24
No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than He blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
(Just as He has placed us strategically in the roles we fulfill today,
the Lord reminds us that He has established
the rulers and powers in office over us,
that He "plants" them in their roles,
that He decides when their rule is finished,
and that all those He has placed in office are subject to His control.
He is the One Who changes times and seasons.
He has established the cycles of sowing and growing and decline in us,
as well as in rulers over us.
He knows the ways of man, and He reigns over the ways of man,
even over those in power and those who rule.
God's plans are not bound by the plans of those in leadership
or by our own incomplete and limited thinking and rule.
Despite what the world looks like through the news of the day,
despite what our lives may look like
through the circumstances we may face today,
the Lord's Kingdom in this world and in our lives is being and will be established.
Those valleys and hardships we face today are subject to His authority,
and He causes them to wither away and fall away from us
like chaff in the wind of His breath.
He rules. He reigns. He is entirely trustworthy and powerful.
In Him our foundation is built on the Rock that is His salvation.
Our hope today is entirely in Him.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:23
He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
(Our Mighty God reigns sovereign.
He rules the earth and His purposes prevail.
He sets up rulers and removes them.
He deposes kings and raises up others.
As much as we may dislike and rebel at the idea,
He places in power those He has ordained to rule,
but He also, in His timing, destroys the influence and power
of those not following the Lord's purposes and design.
The "princes" or "rulers" in our lives today,
those hardships and trials and challenges
that seem to have dominion over us, are also in God's mighty hands.
He invites us today to place our trust in His sovereignty and rule
even over those things in our lives that are uncomfortable or seem indomitable
Nothing comes into our lives that He has not permitted
and which He already knows beforehand He can use to mature us and bless us.
His rule is supreme, even over the valleys through which we walk today
that seem to be ruled by princes and rulers over which we have no control.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 40:22b
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
(Our God is not a human-sized god.
He is not a god who fits nicely within our human-sized boundaries.
He is not a god who obeys us or our restrictions and definitions
or our limited and ineffectual understanding.
He not only lives in the heavens, He reigns above them and over them.
He spreads them out as if they were a thin curtain covering over the earth.
Like a canopy of finely woven fabric of gauze that God spreads over us,
the heavens are a visible picture of the protective covering
that He Himself has placed over us.
He has made the heavens the very curtains of His tent

within which He has placed us
and within which He chooses to dwell with us.
As great and impenetrable and massive and immovable
as the heavens are above us,
so the God Who hovers over us
is as great and impenetrable and massive and immovable.
Knowing that God is this kind of God, today, we can trust in Him,
we can rely on Him, we can rest in Him.       )

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874