Isaiah 30:15 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused.” Today's episode talks about how important it is to rest with the Lord. In today's verse, the Lord tells us that when we return and rest in Him, that is when we are saved. The verse doesn't say anything about us saving ourselves, although that is what the world tells us. God wants us to rest with Him, and we will find strength in the silence and in our trust. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In Returning and Rest, You Will Be Saved
Isaiah 30:15 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused.”
This verse was given at the prayer group yesterday. I really like this verse because it says, in returning and rest, you shall be saved. Have you heard this before? I don’t think that I have heard it at all. The world tells us that we will be saved when we save ourselves. It tells us that we will be saved if we do enough. If we figure out the right thing to do, then we will be saved. If we figure out how to be perfect, then we will be saved. If we figure out who God wants us to be and become that person, then we will be saved. This verse is a welcome change. It is telling us that if we return and rest we will be saved. How great would it be to just rest in the Lord and be saved? How great would it be to finally stop doing so much and yet still be saved?
I had my Message Translation Bible out to look up a verse for someone else, and so I thought I would share with you what this verse says in the message translation. “God, the Master, the Holy of Israel, had this solemn council: "Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me – the very thing you've been unwilling to do.” When I heard this, it rang true in my soul. How many of us are trying to save ourselves or our loved ones? How many of us are wearing ourselves out, trying so hard to do all we can do? We are so tired, we feel so weary, and yet we feel like we are just running in circles. Nothing is really changing.
This verse may be our answer. God Himself is telling us if we return to him and rest, we shall be saved. The question just came into my mind that I never really left the Lord, so why do I have to return to Him? If you were wondering the same, I think the returning is returning the issue to Him. We tend to pray about our problems, we hand them over to the Lord, and then we take them back. We get frustrated, we run out of ways we can help ourselves, and we turn back to God. Then we think of a new way we can help ourselves, so we take our problem back from God. Then we fail, and we give it back to God. Rinse and repeat over and over again. God is telling us to just rest in Him. He will save us.
I love how the message translation says, “Stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.” I know it doesn’t feel like our efforts are silly. We are just doing all we can to save ourselves or our loved ones. Who could blame us? However, if we really think about it, isn’t it kinda silly to think we could do a better job than God? Isn’t it kinda silly to think we might have a better plan than he does? He is the Lord of the whole universe. He not only knows everything about us, including our innermost thoughts, but He knows everything about everything. It stands to reason that He would be about to come up with a better plan because He has more information.
The verse also says, “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” It seems as if we are trying to find our strength in our own ability to save the situation. However, in this verse, the Lord is telling us that when we rest in him, we can find strength in that quietness and trust. Have you ever found strength in quietness before? Have you ever been really worried about something and just sat in silence with the Lord? If you haven’t done this before, I invite you to give it a try. You would be surprised how much comfort and strength you can get when you sit in silence with the Lord. God has told our prayer group several times that it is in the silence that He is healing us. This is when He is ministering to us. This is when He is comforting us and building us up.
Matthew Kelly always talks about the “Classroom of Silence.” He talks about how much you can learn when you sit in the classroom of silence. It is a time when we don’t have to be thinking. We don’t have to be planning. We don’t have to know everything or do everything. We can just sit there and be with the Lord. I invite you to sit with the Lord today, even if it is only five or ten minutes, and see if you feel any different. Whenever I do it, which is not as often as I would like, I feel a lot more peace than I had before. It is as if the worry of the world melts away, and I am filled with peace. Sometimes, it is a lasting peace that I carry with me into the day. Sometimes, it is peace while I am with the Lord, and then I allow all the worries of the world to creep back in. Either way, I have peace for at least those few moments, and it is great!
We can also find our strength in trust. When we trust the Lord, we feel so much stronger because we understand that He is in control and that we know that He is looking out for our best interests. Think of someone in your life that you trust completely. Maybe it is your spouse, or your best friend, or a sibling, or your parents. Who is someone that you trust? Do you feel more confident when you talk to that person? Do you feel like they are giving you good advice or leading you in the right direction? Now, imagine you had that kind of trust in the Lord. What would that feel like? What would that look like? When we know without a doubt that the Lord is in control, then we can feel stronger in our decisions because we know that even if we mess up, God will use it for good. We know that every decision we make isn’t life or death. God is a good Father, and He allows us to make the wrong choice, but then He uses that wrong choice for our good.
Today’s verse ends with, “But you refused.” What if we stopped refusing? What if we decided we were going to turn back to the Lord and accept His help? What if we made the decision to stop trying to fix everything on our own and just rested in the Lord while He saved us? Wouldn’t that be so much better? Wouldn’t it feel so good to just finally rest and let someone else handle it all? Aren’t you tired of trying to do it on your own? I know I am! God is telling us to rest in Him, and He will save us. We know God is not a liar, so why is this so hard? He is telling us we will find our strength in quietness and trust. I think we could all use more strength. So, what if we just rested in the Lord and received all the strength He wants to give us in the quietness, trusting God is in control and He knows best?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we always try to save ourselves. Please help us. Please show us how to sit with you in the silence. Please show us how to rest in you and trust in you. Lord, you are amazing. You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We want to trust that Your plan is better. Please help us. We love you, Lord, and ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I come with my joy. I come with my love. I come with everything that is good. So be not afraid to come. Be not afraid to share all that I share with you, with others, so you can enrich them in my way.”