Hope Is Always in Something New
I will pour sweet water on parched land, streams on hard-packed ground;
I will pour My spirit on your children and grandchildren—
and let My blessing flow to your descendants.
Isaiah 44:3 The Voice
When life takes its turns and we find ourselves at the short end of the stick, it’s hard to look up; we get so focused on the bad turn of events we can’t see beyond our present situation. But sometimes it’s not the turns in life but the regular straightness of life that seems to suck the energy out of us. A Beetle Bailey comic strip I once saw states it well: “I don’t mind the past because it’s done and over. And I don’t mind the future because there’s always hope. What I never liked is the present.” The Israelites to whom God is writing through Isaiah certainly knew this. Granted they were exiled in Babylon, and this was certainly a sharp turn. But after years as servants of their captors, life has become ordinary and now they just plod along day after day “scrubbing floors.” They exist, so what? If we are honest, we all have times when we feel like we are just plodding along – day after day the same thing, over and over, servants to someone or something. There’s got to be something better than that!
The good news is that there is. We were not made to plod along serving someone or something. We were made in freedom to be free and to enjoy a perfectly free relationship with God, our Creator. Sin has taken that away and so we live variously exiled from God; still, God’s desire and plan is that we be free. This is not something we can do for ourselves. Our every effort only further enslaves us. It is something that God can and wants to do. God gives us understanding to how we can again live in that freedom, even while exiled.
First, God announces rescue from life’s present state of affairs. For the Israelites God announced that their current state of exile would end. God doesn’t give details how; he simply states that it will happen. We have been given a similar announcement in Revelation 21. Our current state of exile away from God is to end. We know that our exile has been secured through the saving work of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We also know that the day is coming, we just don’t know when. But, when all is ready, God will announce, “the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3).
Then, God shares his resume. God reminds the Israelites that God is their Redeemer, their God, their Creator, and their King and reminds them of God’s past sustaining, picking the dramatic rescue of the nation from slavery to the Egyptians. We, too, are to remember God’s qualifications and past accomplishments. We are called to weekly worship so that we might remember Jesus’ resurrection and the victory he gained for us over sin and death as well as our soon and coming return from exile. “To God be the glory, great things he has done!”
God would also have us remember God’s “ordinary” accomplishments. While all of us have memories of what God has done which we need to share as well as remember, take a few moments to think about God’s ordinary blessing in just the past week.
Now “forget the former things; do not dwell on the past” (Isaiah 43:18). God declares he is doing a new thing (verse 19). When God acted on Israel’s behalf before, he made a way for them through the sea. They walked on dry ground and their enemy, who followed them into the sea, drowned. God’s not going to do that this time. This time salvation will come by way of the desert in which God will open up streams of water turning a wasteland into a field of abundance.
It’s important to remember what God did, but don’t expect God to act in the same way as before. Search the Bible; you will find that God never does anything the same way twice. For example, the Gospels record Jesus healing the blind on three different occasions. In Matthew 9 two blind men ask for healing. Jesus touched their eyes and their sight is restored. In Mark 8 Jesus spat into a blind man’s eyes and then put his hands on him; the man’s vision was blurry. Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes and the man saw clearly. In John 9 Jesus spat on the ground, made mud, and put that on the man’s eyes and then told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. Three healings, not one was the same.
God has great intentions to do mighty works in and through the church. Remember what God has done in the past but be careful not to expect God to work the same way again. Neither should we expect to do things in the same way. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” With God it’s more: “As a creator/redeemer I have so many wonderful ways of doing things I never have to do it the same way twice” – so God doesn’t. “Forget all that – it is nothing compared to what I am going to do” (43:18 NLT).
God has already begun a new thing in us. Our conference has changed again from seven to four districts. The blessing is that we have no choice but to do things differently. We are being called to Love Boldly, Serve Joyfully, and Lead Courageously. But it will not and cannot be the same as it has always been. How I serve as your District Superintendent, how the District functions, how we cooperate in ministry, how we resource each other … it will and necessarily must be new.
I know, new sounds scary. Different seems unpleasant. I wonder. If we will step out in faith into the new and different, might our greatest desire be realized. To the Israelites God said, “I will pour My spirit on your children and grandchildren – and let My blessing flow to your descendants.” Is that not what we want, families and children and the next generations coming to faith in Jesus? God says, “I have awesome plans for you. You will live in the freedom I had always intended. For this to become our reality, we have to let go of what was so that we can take hold of what can be. A friend once shared with me that we cannot hold onto God very well when we are also trying to hold onto the things of this world. But if we will give God what was we will be able to hold onto God with both hands.
“But now listen to me, Central Shores District pastors and congregations, my servants, my chosen ones. The Lord who made you and helps you says: O my servant, do not be afraid; my chosen ones, do not fear. For, I will give you abundant water to quench your thirst and to moisten your parched fields. And I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank. Some will proudly claim, ‘I belong to God.’ Others will say, ‘I was raised in the United Methodist Church.’ Some will write the name ‘Jesus’ on their hands and will take the honored name of God’s beloved one as their own.” Isaiah 44:1-5 NLT
With you on this journey,
DS John