{"id":7225,"date":"2020-12-14T00:57:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T06:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2020-12-14T00:57:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T06:57:38","slug":"devotional-on-isaiah-128","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-isaiah-128\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Isaiah"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-RMNRmI50mvE\/X9aXiQIHcqI\/AAAAAAABH3w\/7o1Qjw1AonceGPo0jjEUGsQpPPxPlTiogCPcBGAsYHg\/s1280\/PB251325.JPG\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><center>Garner State Park, TX &#8211; 2006<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I\u2019d rather do it myself<br \/>\nIsaiah 30: Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.<br \/>\nThe salvation being spoken of in this passage isn\u2019t &#8220;getting religion.&#8221; Instead, it\u2019s salvation from an enemy that\u2019s threatening to destroy them. Their effort to save themselves includes preparing for war and forming an alliance with a powerful nation that they might defend themselves. Still, there\u2019s a spiritual element here. Their nation&#8217;s existence has always been improbable, a seeming fluke of history. Their ancestors were slaves who never had a chance of calling any land their own. Had it not been for God Almighty acting on their behalf they would have, by now, been one of thousands of forgotten people groups, a mere footnote in history. To forget just who they are how they came to be is a recipe for disaster. However, that\u2019s exactly what they\u2019ve done. They\u2019ve removed from their lives the One who gave them existence in the first place. Now, when everything starts coming apart they\u2019re looking for a &#8220;reasonable&#8221; solution; a solution that excludes God. Through Isaiah the God they\u2019ve ignored tells them that they have only one chance and that chance is in him. What\u2019s true of nations is also true of individuals. I owe my very life to him. The next breath I take is a gift of the God who has loved me and patiently worked in my life. To turn my back on him and fool myself into thinking I can handle life on my own will result in disaster. In Isaiah&#8217;s words: my &#8220;strength will come from settling down in complete dependence&#8221; on the Lord. There&#8217;s plenty of hope here, but also there\u2019s plenty of warning.<br \/>\nTake Away: The Lord is our hope \u2013 our only hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019d rather do it myself Isaiah 30: Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. The salvation being spoken of in this passage isn\u2019t &#8220;getting religion.&#8221; Instead, it\u2019s salvation from an enemy that\u2019s threatening to destroy them. Their effort to save themselves includes preparing for war [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,7],"tags":[131,422,473,564,941,1142],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14963,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225\/revisions\/14963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}