Tuesday, April 1, 2014

See it:  Read Isaiah 53:1-3

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 

List the words that are used to describe Jesus.

 

Chew it:  As I read through these three verses, of course, my first response is one of outrage and saying, “How can people be so callous!”  However, as I’ve grown deeper in understanding myself, I realize that I am “people.”  It’s too easy for us to point our finger at some other group of people and at the same time be unwilling to admit that we would have behaved the same way. From time-to-time I look back into my younger years and I am forced to admit that I did not always behave in an honorable way.  My guess is in twenty years, I will look back on the way I behaved this year and come to the same conclusion.

 

Do it: When was the last time you were ashamed of, or disappointed in, the way you acted? Bring this before God throughout the day, not with the intent of beating yourself up but in order to confess, to be forgiven, and most importantly, to ask God to give you a greater awareness so that you would not repeat the same thing again.