Wednesday 21 September

Isaiah 49:8-51:16

For people who are struggling, who are feeling lost, lonely and scared there can be no greater comfort than hearing the LORD saying “I will answer you... you will find pasture on every barren hill... I will guide you... I will not forget you... I have engraved you on the palms of my hands... kings will be your foster fathers... those who hope in me will not be disappointed... I am your Redeemer ... I am your Saviour... I will make your deserts like Eden... my salvation will last forever... my righteousness will last forever... everlasting joy will crown your heads... you are my people”.  These words are where we need to base our identity.  These are the words in which we find our security.  Let’s have them washing around in our heads.  Let’s meditate on them and feast on them in our souls.  These are the source of our strength.

Galatians 6:1-18

We get to the end of the letter and find the punch and stroke of Paul’s conclusion.  We are a new creation, we’ve started again at Calvary, so let’s live like we’ve started again.  And the avenue by which we demonstrate our starting again is our interaction with people.  How you and I treat the people around us is perhaps the primary way that we show that we are saved.  So if we want to know what we are called to, if we want to know what the LORD’s vision for our life is, then we can be sure it includes this - loving and serving those around us.  We should carry each others burdens.  Stress and hardship and suffering is like a burden that sits on people - and the LORD would have all us of bear some of it, rather than just leaving a few people to buckle under it all.  So we need to get into people’s lives and be unembarrassed about asking them to tell us how they really are so we can really help them by praying and chatting and providing practical assistance.  This is what we are called to.  But we are called to do it in a mature way.  We carry others’ burdens not just by following their every whim but also by challenging them to live right, not to hold onto a victim status, not to become a vacuum that sucks others dry of their care.  We are to walk one another forward into holiness and into ‘carrying their own load’.  This is what ‘doing good’ is defined by - by helping people become a new creation in Jesus and then by helping them to live out the reality of this ‘new creation’.  We are good to people by helping them to suffer well and to have the right priorities in life, to know that they are part of the Israel of God and to enjoy and share the peace and mercy of the gospel.  

Proverbs 23:10-18

The defender of the fatherless is strong.