ESOCS Devotional 9 July 2021
TEXT: ISAIAH 6:11-13
MEMORY VERSE: “Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.” (Isaiah 6:11 KJV).
Isaiah’s vision was his call to be God’s messenger to God’s people. It was a difficult mission- he was to tell this people who believed they were blessed by God that He would destroy them because of their disobedience. The people would not listen to Isaiah because their heart had hardened beyond repentance. God’s patience with their chronic rebellion was finally exhausted, and His judgment was to abandon them to their rebellion and hardness of heart. But when would the people listen?
They would listen only when they had come to the end and had nowhere to turn to, but to God. This would happen when the land would be destroyed by invading armies and the people taken into captivity, and the land would be forsaken (Isaiah 6:11, 12). What does the above passage teach us?
First, when will man repent? Must he like Judah go through calamities before he repents? Another lesson is that God is always knocking at the door of man’s heart. If he opens, God will come in; if not, He goes away [Revelation 3:20]. “There is a stranger at the door, let Him in. He has been there oft before. Let Him in ere He is gone. Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, Let Him in.” That is the lyrics in ESOCS hymn book number 177, stanza 1.
Many people today are like Judah – they shun the gospel of Christ but spend time and energy on frivolities until disaster befalls them; then, they seek God. Some wait for ‘confusion’ arising from outbreak of diseases like we saw with the Corona virus (COVID 19) pandemic that started from Wuhan, China at end of 2019, to the rest of the world before they began to think of repentance. The wise counsel in Psalm 95:7b-11, should be taken seriously.
- What factors hold you back from repentance.
- Ask God to help you overcome the factors, and to repent genuinely.
Read Other ESOCS Devotional here
FURTHER READING: Proverbs 28:14; Amos 3:1-2; Jonah 1, 3; Matthew 3:1-3, 7-1
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ESOCS Devotional 9 July 2021
