The Lord Be With You Today!
Isaiah 64:1-3
Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before You!
(When the Lord records a prayer in Scripture,
He is giving us a model for ways we can call on Him in our need.
Here is one such prayer model, beginning with a plea for help.
Isaiah prays that the Lord would no longer
simply see and hear the woes of His people,
but that He would rip open the heavens to reveal Himself,
to show Himself and His mighty works again
on behalf of His people who are in great need.
Needing more than some general view of the Lord as might be seen
all around through His Hand of influence in creation
or from the memory of past deeds of deliverance for His people,
now the prophet pleads with God to reveal Himself
in ways that make Him known in new ways to His people.
He pleads for the Lord, after having seen the desperation of His people,
to rip apart the heavens that cloak Him
as one would rend his garments when he was expressing great grief.
He is asking the Lord to make the mountainous oppression
that blocks and impedes His people
to tremble and hide before His wrath and judgment.)
As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,
come down to make Your Name known to Your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before You!
(The prayer continues in restating and calling to mind the awesome power of God.
In the same way that a fire consumes its fuel
or heats to a degree that water would evaporate,
the prophet asks the Lord Who Himself is a consuming fire
to make the fiery heat of His presence
melt away the mountainous oppression of the enemies of God's people.
Isaiah wants more than even Babylon
to see God's intervention on behalf of His people.
He wants the world to know that the Lord God is fiercely present
so they would tremble in fear and awe before Him.)
For when You did awesome things that we did not expect,
You came down, and the mountains trembled before You.
(Now the prayer model turns to recalling the works
God has done before in the lives of His people.
In the same way that the Lord had before delivered Israel out of Egypt
with miraculous signs and wonders
that were completely outside of and beyond man's normal experience,
in the same way that Mt. Sinai quaked
when the Presence of Almighty God descended on it
as He gave Moses the Ten Commandments,
Isaiah is asking the Lord to come in that same level of might and power
to deliver His people now from their exile in Babylon.
When we are in need, when we are faint-hearted, when we falter in our faith,
the surest remedy to build our faith is to focus on past places
where God has unfailingly met out needs,
to take note of the markers in our lives that point to God's powerful intervention,
and to be encouraged in His steadfast faithfulness
to know that He remains all that and more still today.)
May the Lord richly bless you this day!
In Christ's love,
Blessings!
Sally
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