All for Show
I have been told that God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is, "No."
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. - Isaiah 1:16-17
Isaiah tells the rulers of Sodom that the Lord will not listen to them until they change their ways.
It doesn't matter if they perform all the right rituals and sacrifices, if beneath it all, they fail to do what is right by God.
There is a message here for us and it runs counter to all those lessons and practices of our youth, the things we were told we had to do to be good Christians.
It is not enough to go to church and say our prayers, to offer up all our sins and seek forgiveness. God may choose to ignore us.
What?
That's not how it is supposed to work. We should be able to do what ever we want and then come seeking restitution when we feel we've gone too far. Isn't that what Jesus did for people?
When Jesus healed someone, he offered to them a way of living that would ensure that they would stay healed. He told them to go and sin no more.
Isaiah is telling us God sees all we do and don't do, so He knows if we mean it when we make offerings to Him, of if it is all for show.
Isaiah is not just telling us to cease doing evil. He also tells us we must do good, and he gives us examples of the types of things God wants from us as our sacrifices. Rescue the oppressed; defend the orphans; plead for the widow.
We need to be out there doing real work for God, and that is the point. Doing good is hard work. It takes effort and it is not something we can put off or fit in when we have time. We need to take care of this stuff first, and then get about our business.
Now maybe God will answer our prayers if we don't do all this. But why wait until we are in dire straits to find out? What we consider good practices of our faith may just be all for show in God's eyes, since He knows what lies beneath.
So, now is the time to give ourselves a jolt of real God work. It is Advent, the time when we prepare for God's coming, and we can spend that time getting busy doing what He expects of us.
We can busy ourselves decorating the house, putting out the manger, singing carols and buying presents, or we can go out and make a difference in someone's life.
It's up to us.
More to come...