Bravo Isaiah!

Has there ever been better imagery to help us understand that knowing and living the Word of God is what nourishes us and may well be the key to living that elusive abundant life?

Listen to familiar words in Isaiah 55:10-13:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread   for   the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Are the next verses, the text of a loved chorus, part of the purpose for the word? Certainly they are tied to it.

You will go out with joy and be lead forth in peace;
The mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the tree of the field will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

Incredible imagery! The brier—any prickly or thorny bush-is dry, ugly, menacing, hurtful, something we want to avoid.

The myrtle, on the other hand, an opposite of the briar, is a family of plants characterized by three things that please those who come in contact with it: evergreen leaves, white or pinkish flowers, and dark, fragrant berries.

Anyone wanting to resemble myrtle instead of briers, reads the Word, and more importantly, trusts it and lives it. Hungering for God and his work in my life almost always goes hand-in-hand with absorbing his Word. My best reading is done with pencil in hand, interacting with God’s revealed word.

Some of my favorite things to write in the margins of my Bible are prayers, prayers I might not have thought to pray without the influence and prodding of God’s Word. Prayers from a Bible passage that take me far beyond natural and narrow petition into areas of understanding and growth.

In the next blogs, I want to show you some of those prayers and hope you’ll see how such prayers have the potential of nourishing us into spiritual vitality.

And I’m praying you’ll ask yourself two things when this series is over: What will God show me if I look for Him in his Word; what prayers will I begin to pray?

(And for any former students—yes, the duck story will be among these blogs about prayers from God’s Word.)