Read Deuteronomy 4, Isaiah 63, 1 Corinthians 5.
This devotional is about Isaiah 63.
How close do you feel to God right now? Do you sense his presence with you often? Have you sensed his presence and favor in the past but, at least right now, the Lord feels distant, detached, far away.
Living by your feelings and judging your relationship to God by your feelings can be dangerous. If you are in Christ, God is with you and for you always, even when you don’t feel like it or sense his presence or favor in your life.
God never changes and his promise is to be with us always, so the moments where you feel detached and distant from God maybe more about you than about him. Maybe you have stopped praying, stopped reading his word expecting to hear from him, or have begun to meditate on sinful or just the mundane things of this world instead of on the Lord and his promises. Maybe you are still going to church, reading the word, and praying, but you are performing these habits as a routine–like brushing your teeth–rather than as earnest spiritual activity.
Here in Isaiah 64, Isaiah is aware of the Lord’s detachment from Israel as a nation. The passage opens in verses 1-6 with a vivid description of God’s judgment on Edom, but starting in verse 7, Isaiah begins talking about Israel’s complicated relationship with God.
Verses 7-9 describe God’s kindness (v. 7), love, and mercy (v. 9c) through, as verse 7d puts it, “the many good thins he has done for Israel.” But, according to verse 10, God became Israel’s enemy because “they rebelled and grieved the Holy Spirit.”
Verses 11-14 describe how Israel remembered God’s deliverance from Egypt (v. 17a-b) and how he delivered them into the Promised Land (v. 14). This brings us to the first thing we should do when we feel detached from God. We should “recall the days of old” (v. 11) wherein God, as verse 14 put it, “…guided your people to make for yourself a glorious name.” So, when you feel detached from God, remember what he has done in the past–both for you and for all his people. Remember that Jesus became a man, died for our sins, and rose again to save you because of his love for us.
Beginning in verse 15, Isaiah turned from describing God’s complicated relationship with Israel to praying for God to work in his people again spiritually. He wrote, beginning in verse 15, “Look down from heaven and see, from your lofty throne, holy and glorious… “You, LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name” (v. 15a-b & v. 16d-e). So this is the next thing you can do when God feels distant. You can pray!
But what exactly do ask for when you pray? Ask for God to work in your heart. Verse 17 says, “Why, LORD, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?” This is an indirect way of asking God to soften our hearts so that we fear and worship him again, which is exactly what we need when our spiritual life goes adrift into sin or worldliness or just plain neglect.
Isaiah’s prayer goes into chapter 64, but there is more than enough here in Isaiah 63 for us today. When your spiritual life feels adrift, it is time to remember what God has done for us and pray for him to work in our hearts, softening our hardness toward him and renewing our reverence and awe for who he is.
Take some time now to pray, not asking God for anything, but asking him to pull you toward him in your heart.