Hardships? Calamity? Call On God!

 Suppressing-the-Fire: Eyes Wide Open

TUE Evening Prayer Reflection 011221 (Isaiah 40:25-31; Ephesians 1: 15-23)

Do you have a calamity, call on God who is all powerful and all knowing! I feel this is a worthy introduction into our Old Testament reading of Isaiah 40. The prophet Isaiah deals the distress of God’s people suffering under the Assyrians. They were desperately looking for deliverance and they were unsure of what will happen next. It was a time of uncertainty, a time of enduring the hardships of exile. I am unsure if their attitudes were appropriate as I read the prophet’s text, it seems they had lost confidence and their hope: “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God?” What was that about? God encouraged them: “Lift up your eyes on high” In other words: Don’t focus on your circumstances! Look up and marvel at what God has created. Look at the brilliance and wisdom behind the workings of his creation. Have confidence that God knows everything and even if your deliverance is delayed, it will surely come.

It is as if God was reasoning with them: “Why do you say such things like you are disregarded by your God? Don’t you know the Lord does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. Yet you and your young people, do faint and grow weary. Could it be that our hardships render us blind to the fact that God is still in control? His Love for us never take vacation! Those who have come to know the Lord, understands well his passionate love for the faint; the powerless and the brokenhearted. It is not wise to think we are stronger than we really are that’s when we get distracted and most likely fail realizing that without God we cannot stand.

When we are at our wits end, our thoughts fluctuate from bad to worse when we say things that show that we have lost hope and confidence. We may blame Israelites saying they had a much closer walk with God, how can they forget God so easily? But the truth is that challenges in our lives are way too easy compared to theirs. Is our faith any different? We get angry at little things and fail to give thanks for the many blessings we have in life! We lose our awareness of God’s mercies and immeasurable love.

The prophet Isaiah encourages us that “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” In other words, hang in there! Trust and wait on the Lord. We might not know when this calamity will end, but let’s pray fervently for God to show up and end this pandemic! Let’s pray that God would come in the midst of our situations and heal us, fix us and allow us to open our spiritual eyes, to look up and see and perceive the promises of God Almighty to His people!

As Paul explained in his letter to the Ephesians, that power of God will be within you. He wrote: “As you come to know him… with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”

I heard a story of a young Christian lady who was engaged to be married. One night after the prayers, on her way home, she was abducted, raped and fell pregnant after the ordeal. The situation became so difficult as none would believe her story. Her fiancé stood by her throughout it all. The church had excommunicated her saying that she was lying to cover for her sin. She kept believing in Jesus and the power of God to affect her situation. One day she was feeling so despondent, she and her friends decided to go on a mountain to pray… they did not know that they were deep inside the national park where wild animals live. They spent a number of hours fasting in a small cave and God spoke to her saying that her burdens were taken from her, that she needed to stand up and go home. They did not realize they were in a leopard’s territory, because by the time they left, the leopard came in. It could have been a fatal encounter but their faith in God was so powerful. Eventually the perpetrators were caught in another incident and they confessed everything they did to her. Unfortunately, later on she lost the baby in childbirth.

Call on God. He will rescue you! Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

 

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