Isaiah 40

Ms. Kari Jobe is my friend. Her music tends to accompany when I'm in the car or on the computer. But I don't just enjoy her superb vocal chords. She points me to Christ. She reminds me of Him and His word, and draws me to His throne. And sister Kari, that's what friendship is about!

One of her songs sings some of these lyrics "We prepare the way of the Lord"....."Give us new hearts and new minds"..."May your name be lifter higher". And while all of this sounded good to my ear and certainly sounded like something a Christian should sing, I want to know where it's coming from.

Isaiah 40, often a chapter that is known for being quoted by high school cross country girls on the back of their season tshirts, had a new light. I almost skipped over the first two verses trying to get to "preparing the way." But may we as Christians not make light of the fact that our "hard service has been completed, our "sin has been paid for", and we have "received from the Lord's hand double for all our sins." It is because of the grace of God and the bloodshed of his son, that we can prepare the way for the Lord. My friend so bluntly put it like this yesterday, "God didn't write down all our sins on a card and then mark them out and put Jesus' name over them, He took them off of us and literally put them on Jesus." Wow. That's kind of a mindblower. Our hard service has been completed. Praise HIM! May I never forget that.

So because sin is no longer the Christian's preoccupation, we should then focus on preparing the way of the Lord. "Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God." That's quite a task and quite a metaphor. What does that even mean Lord? I kind of see this picture in my head of the Lord ready to move in people's hearts, ready to turn the nations back to Him. We are to prepare them. Not that their salvation has anything to do with anything we do or say, but my life can either point people towards Christ, or towards other things or, ashamedly, to myself. I pray that I would not be a stumbling block to those whom the Lord is ready to save.

Verse 6- the voice says, "Cry out." And Isaiah. What a goofball. "What should I cry out?"

What do you want me to say to them? How? Uh? Should I? What?

Kind of sounds like me when I'm questioning God. A goofball.
Verse 9- a duh moment for both Isaiah and me. Say to them, "Here is your God." It goes on and on and on about who the Lord is, about some crazy stuff like how he "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand" and how he "weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills on a balance." Stuff that kind of makes me chuckle when I read it, but if I understood the vastness and greatness of the Lord it should probably bring me to my knees. Isaiah 40 makes much of the Lord and little of man. "The nations are like a drop in a bucket....they are regarded as dust on the scales." Ego kick. "To whom will you compare me?"

I have a better idea now of "prepare the way." I have a better idea of how to be like Paul. The Christian life should be about preparing the way. Everything we do should be showing others Christ- encouraging the saints in their faith and pointing the lost to Christ. If something I'm doing isn't about that then I'm really not preparing much of a highway for the King.

May my life make this statement:
"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting GOD, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." vs.28

To make much of Christ, and nothing of ourselves.