Obedience Of Faith!

God’s love for us is amazing! He never gives up on us! We see God’s tenacity to the promise he had made to Israel’s ancestors. By the time of the prophet Isaiah, God was still communicating the same promise concerning the redemption of humanity. The story is that all generations have made a mess of things, but God’s promise remained intact through time. God always tried to steer Israel back on track, sadly many times in vain. Here we are treated to a conversation between the prophet speaking for God and King Ahaz. Ahaz had already chosen his allies to save him in case he is attacked. Then God comes into the picture: to bid him to choose a sign so God would show him how powerfully He can save him. But Ahaz refused because he had trusted the Assyrians, their forces and their gods, and would not place himself under the God of Israel anymore. Beloved, Ahaz symptoms are still with us today, especially when our own choices reflect a level of rebellion to God’s ways. When we are conscious of our delicate standing in front of God's presence, we are to capture God’s love trying to connect with us and to heal us through Jesus our Redeemer and Savior. Restore us O God we pray! It saddens God greatly that we find ourselves in this human predicament that we share with Adam & Eve/ king Ahaz, to do whatever we want without godly boundaries. There is a reason why God gave us the power of choice, and a reason why God gave us boundaries, so we can live in perfect harmony with his creation! Sadly, perfect harmony has not been our experience. If you were a soccer coach for young boys and told them to play but there are no rules, if anyone got hurt, they would just continue to play. This is not how God intended creation to function. God’s heart hurts at every hurting heart in our world. (We heard all the school shootings and wars in our world. I heard from African villages mourning their boys lost in the Russian war. That's what war does. It takes lives and it hurts God's heart. Most of it is consequences of our own choices like King Ahaz whose hope eventually was crushed when his powerful allies died as the prophet said. Paul talks about obedience of faith for those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. Our perfect example is in Phil 2: “Christ humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Jesus was trying to show us obedience in action. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he says there is power in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The power of the resurrection: The power to overcome our weaknesses and to propel us into a life of righteousness in Christ. Only God’s grace helping, can we truly become obedient to the faith! This wouldn’t have been possible without the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as promised in Holy Scriptures to be the Son of David (The Messiah) and at the same time, the Son of God in full divine nature. That’s hope for us! God will not use Napoleon Bonaparte to save us. He is a Human like us. It requires God to be able to save us. One of our Church Father Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon wrote: “Christ became what we are, so that he might make us into what He is!” The truth is that like king Ahaz we are a mess and we have made a mess of things. God’s intention has always been to save us, and it has not changed from day one. God comes in the middle of our troubles to make sure we are on the right track. Our Psalmist let out a cry that says Restore us O God of Hosts! Allow us to begin a new journey of righteousness. We have such opportunity today, to ask God to help us choose life when there are choices in front of us and all around us leading to death. God pursues us like He pursued king Ahaz. May we capture His love and love him back. Let us pray: “Restore us God, I pray, where we have put our trust in earthly powers, please, gently reorient us back to you O God, In Christ Jesus your Son.” Amen.