Balancing Truths: Pt. 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. All this week we’re starting each day with time with God. That means we’re listening to God in His word, the Bible, and responding to Him in our hearts and minds. That’s how you grow in your relationship with God. It’s two-way communication. It’s friendship. It’s fellowship. God is speaking to you. You hear Him through the Bible.

And you are responding to Him talking about your life, depending on Him, calling on Him for His help.

All this week we’re looking at balancing truths in the Bible, not just thinking about the verses we love in the Bible or the things we want to focus on to feel good, but looking at the balancing proofs that go along with those things. On Monday we saw that God is loving and offers grace and forgiveness, but also he’s angry about sin and will bring judgment.

Yesterday we saw that although God loves to bless your life with good times, sometimes His perfect plan for you includes disaster.

Well, today we want to see this truth. Sometimes when you minister to people in obedience to God, in the power of the Holy Spirit to honor God, there are amazing spiritual breakthroughs in the lives of the people you speak to.

And sometimes when you minister in obedience to God in the power of the Holy Spirit to honor Him, people will ignore you and harden their hearts against God.

Think about Isaiah chapter 6. Any time you go to a missions conference, you’ll hear. The verse quoted from Isaiah chapter 6 where Isaiah says, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am. Send me.

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This first comes right after Isaiah has had an amazing encounter with God. He’s at probably the spiritual high point of his life as God has revealed Himself to him in a very powerful way, and in that time of spiritual sensitivity.

He hears God saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And Isaiah steps forward in faith. Here I am. Send me, and maybe you’ve done that in your life. You’ve joined the worship team. You’ve put your hand up to be a group leader at your church. Maybe you’ve said yes to God to go into full-time ministry, preaching, teaching. Maybe you’re a missionary.

We think when we say that we put ourselves in God’s hands that God is going to use us in such amazing powerful ways and everyone is going to be ready to respond to Him.

Well, yes, people do respond to him in amazing ways, and I can share with you so many things that just bring such deep joy to my heart of how God has worked through me in the lives of people.

But I just want you to notice this. Yes, even that happened for Isaiah. But here’s the primary calling from God. Isaiah said, Here I am. Send me. Here’s what the following verses say. And God said, OK, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed.

Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant. And houses without people and the land is a desolate waste and the Lord removes people far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land and though 1/10 remain in it, it will be burned again like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled.

Well we focus in on Isaiah’s response to God, and in our minds it means Isaiah went on to this glorious ministry of people responding to Him. But God tells Isaiah from the very beginning, You’re going to speak, you’re going to preach. You’re going to be speaking my word in a way that is focused on me to glorify me, but people will not listen. Their hearts are going to be hard.

And you won’t see great fruit. The same thing happened for Jeremiah. The same thing we see in Jesus’s life at the end of his ministry as he comes to Jerusalem, and he says:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

And I want to ask you today, are you willing to serve God and obey Him, even if there is not great fruitfulness, if that is what God calls you to?

I’m John North.

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