“Your people will go to their temple in Dibon to mourn. They will go to their sacred shrines to weep.” Isaiah 15:2
When the storms of life appear, where will you run? When the tempests of this life force themselves into your world and your life, thrashing all you know with their emotional fury and damaging all you know and love, where will you seek your refuge? And as it seems all hope is vanishing before you as mist upon the wind, what or whom is it that you will take comfort in? For you see, when difficult times plague us all, there will be something or someone that we take hope in as our refuge. The question for you today is…when life deals these difficult blows, into what or whose arms will you run?
In Isaiah chapter 15 we hear Isaiah delivering a heart-wrenching prophecy about God’s upcoming judgement of the city and peoples Moab. Moab has the quite the checkered history throughout the Old Testament. The founder of the people of Moab was the son born out of the incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters, when his daughters urged him into drunkeneness. (Genesis 19:30-38). It was Balak, king of Moab, who hired Balaam the prophet, hoping that he could curse the Israel nation (Numbers 22-24). And king David was one-quarter Moabite with his paternal grandmother, Ruth, being a Moabite (Ruth 1). And for these reasons, especially the latter, there is a great deal of sadness and empathy on Isaiah’s part as he delivers God’s coming wrath on Moab. And in the opening lines of God’s judgement, we see the true sadness of the affair. As the wrath of God is released upon the sinfully arrogant peoples of Moab, when the tempests arrive in all their fury, we see them run to the only comfort they know, they run to the false gods and idols that surround them on every side. They run to idols made of human hands and gods created by human imaginations to weep and mourn their plight...they lay their empty pleas in an empty shrine at the feet of a empty metal statue.
“Your people will go to their temple in Dibon to mourn. They will go to their sacred shrines to weep.”
The storms of life will materialize upon your horizons, that is a guarantee. And as they do where will you run? Will you run to the comfort of idols? Anything that you give time and resources to instead of God that creates distance between you and God can be considered an idol. Will you run to the arms of false shrines and temples? Any religious experience not placing the truth of God’s Word and the truth of His only Son Jesus Christ and His redemptive work upon the cross at the very center is false religion. Will you escape to the comfort of drugs, alcohol, or pornography, masking the pain in self-medication? Or will you escape to the shrine of self, resting where most of the world resides in tough times, in pride, ego, and self-confidence. You see, there is a place you can flee to during tribulation that will offer you the peace, comfort, and safety your heart and soul is crying out for during those times. Only one place. The arms of Jesus Christ. They are always open, always ready, and always receiving those that are weeping in their pains and struggles. If you are seeking peace and comfort today from the storms of your life, instead of running to something that cannot truly satisfy, run to Jesus. Admit that you are a sinner and that on your own you cannot justify, control, or eliminate your sin. Ask Jesus to apply His work on the cross 2000 years ago to your sin today. And when you do, He is faithful to save all that call upon His name. And to a child of God, saved by Jesus and anointed with the very Holy Spirit of God, the storms of life will look very different indeed. For now, instead of, like the Moabites, running to the things of the world that are battered by the same storms, you will be running into the arms of the very one that is not battered by those storms, but created them. The very arms that created you, created the storm, and will see you not harmed by them, but empowered to endure them and grow through them.
Today, I pray that whatever storm is buffeting your life, you are running to the only one that can truly protect and preserve during life’s rough waters…the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the world…Jesus Christ.
Bendiciones abundantes para su dia (blessings for your day) ~ Dan
“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
Isaiah 45:1-3
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