In the light of today’s reading let’s recognise again what is most important to God. God sees everything that is wrong in your life. He sees more resistance and hard heartedness in you that you yourself see. Often, we, being partly conscious of these things, despair of ever being able to please God. When we think of God, we immediately feel ashamed of our failures, and we therefore find it difficult to turn to him. We are inevitably deeply inclined to avoid God altogether. It just all seems too hard sometimes. In all this there is a tragic misconception about God. What God most wants is not your good behaviour and righteous achievements. He wants you. What really pleases God is not you successfully getting your life together (this is impossible for you in any case). What pleases God is when you let him help you to get your life together. God is not looking for you to do things for him primarily. He wants you to let him do something for you. God’s plan is never ultimately to condemn but to save and only he can save us. His plan is always to restore you no matter how far you have strayed or how bad your failures. These words in Isaiah 54 confirm this about God. If this people who had rebelled against God so repeatedly and stubbornly over hundreds of years in the face of constant grace and warning can be forgiven and restored, then so can you. There is always grace for you. Don’t ever despair of yourself, for God does not despair of you. You are not beyond God’s grace.
Commit yourself to God and ask him to restore you.
Read Isaiah 54
