May 12 I Thursday

2 Kings 15-16

John 3:1-18

“‘To whom will you compare Me? Or who is My equal?’ says the Holy One.”   —Isaiah 40:25

Some of us, if we are honest, are fighting and resisting God. This is because a problem with humanity is that we think we know better than Him. We argue with how He does things, believing that we can teach Him the right way. We have an over-inflated sense of self-importance, an arrogance in the heart of humanity, a curvature of the spine that turns us inward. We are narcissistic by nature.

      The prophet Isaiah reveals this through five rhetorical questions that silence humanity from questioning God. Isaiah 40:12-14 goes, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, or with the breadth of His hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD, or instruct the LORD as His counsellor? Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten Him, and who taught Him the right way? Who was it that taught Him knowledge, or showed Him the path of understanding?”

      Isaiah then draws our attention to why this pathology takes root in our lives, the games that we play with God. Basically, we have made God too small in our eyes and our hearts are full of idolatry. Isaiah 40:18-20 tells us, “With whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken Him? As for an idol, a metalworker casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it. A person too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot; they look for a skilled worker to set up an idol that will not topple.” Isaiah is saying that we take God and try to fashion Him into our image, something that we can exercise control over, but we fail to realize that He sits enthroned above. We need to repent from and reform our thinking and desire to domesticate and control God.

      It is good for us, from time to time, to ask ourselves if we are truly worshipping the God that we encounter in Scripture. In fact, if we look at what we have highlighted or underlined in the Bible, we can tell what type of God we worship. We tend to emphasize the verses that appeal to us and pass over verses that we do not like; if we do too much of that, the challenge is that we are not actually encountering the God of Scripture, but an idol of what we believe He should be. When we truly embrace the God of the Bible and stop fighting Him, we will find that He is awesome and completely worthy to be worshipped.

Prayer: Dear God, You are indeed awesome and completely worthy to be worshipped. I confess of the times when I wanted to make You small. Please forgive me for my idolatry. Thank You, Lord.