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Good morning fasters and prayer warriors!

I’m on my ninth day of this juice fast. Last night before bed, Karen made me a yummy mixed fruit juice with mineral water. With delicious fare like that, you hardly notice the absence of food. I’m discovering that my fears of constant hunger pangs were overblown. I feel like I’m a kid standing in the freezing water yelling to his friends standing on the pool’s edge, “C’mon in, the water isn’t cold at all!” But seriously, if you’ve not committed to the food fast yet, it’s not too late to start. The spiritual focus that comes with the fast more than offsets the struggle over not eating. As we draw near to God, doing what He asks, He draws near to us.

I’m enjoying the communication with many of you. Charles Kaye writes: “This notion of entering into a deeper relationship with the Lord is one of the most ‘missed’ experiences. I hear pastors talk about it, I hear Christian friends mention it. But if you scratch the surface, in general you find these are just words. What they really want are the benefits without the work. God waited for a year’s worth of prayers from me asking, ‘What does it mean to obey?’ before he spoke. He wanted me to thirst after Him. He is waiting for our hearts to cry….”

So, at last we get to dive into Isaiah 58! What a treat is in store for us. This is my life passage. We’ll take it verse by verse.

Isaiah 58:1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins.”

Sharing a word from the Lord

If you’ve ever felt God asking you to say something to someone else, something so challenging that you felt awkward sharing it, perhaps your heart began to beat and you felt a lump in your throat. It wasn’t so much the message you had to deliver, perhaps, but the question as to how in the world you were supposed to deliver it. Why couldn’t God just tell you to sit the person down and share it over a drink or to write them a letter? Just a little stage management would go a long way.

Isaiah didn’t have that problem. As God’s mouthpiece to the nation of Israel, he not only received the word of the Lord, he also had God’s coaching. As we join the two of them in mid-conversation in Isaiah 58, the Lord has something to say and He’s about to share not only what that is, but how He wants it said.

How a message is communicated is a part of the message. So, if hypocrisy exists, God wants to reveal it with the same attitude with which Jesus took on the Pharisees. He wants to get their attention and stop them in their tracks. God will not let Isaiah equivocate. So God tells Isaiah how His word should be communicated, much as a director might speak to an actor: “Isaiah, speak boldly, with a shout, like a trumpet!”

When you think about it, how else would you share a message from God? Shouldn’t a clear message from God to a group of people be delivered boldly, with authority? Before the presidential election in 2000, a pastor named Dutch Sheets felt that God had told him that the election would be a pivotal one for our country and that the Church needed to pray hard for it. He shared that word with everyone he knew. And whatever your political persuasion may be, there is no denying that it was the most tightly contested election in history. The direction of the country was dramatically different as a result. The point is that Sheets had what he felt was a message from God and he boldly shared it.

Tomorrow, more delving into the riches of this first verse.

God bless you as you go through your day,

seth