Isaiah 58

Isaiah 58!!

Isaiah 58 has soo many different points to hit on! In this chapter, Isaiah talks about fasting, hypocrisy, helping others, honoring God, and more! In this blog I'm just going to share the things that spoke to me the most out of Isaiah 58. In verses 2-4 hypocrisy is brought up. Hypocrites are people who pretend to be someone they are not, or they say one thing and do another. Sometimes they even tell others how to live, but they don't do it themselves. God hates hypocrisy. People can have all the right words and even go through the motions of doing many things they are supposed to be doing, pointing out their righteous behavior to God. But God sees right through them because when they aren't talking big, they are living small! Are you really who you say you ware? Do you show people a certain person on the outside that doesn't really exist on the inside? One of the biggest slams to Christianity is hypocrisy. In Matthew, Jesus called these kind of people whitewashed tombs - looking on the outside but full of dead bones on the inside. God wants us to be authentic and genuine! To admit our weaknesses, not pretend to be someone we are not, and to LIVE our faith even more that we talk about it! When our friends add up all the little snapshots of our lives, they will know you are for real, and you will have a great witness! One of the things our teacher spoke to us about is that we need to be very careful of what we expose ourselves too! We shouldn't even be attracted to the same movies that non-Christians are attracted too! We need to know what gospel we are sharing!! Psalm 101:3 says, "I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;" What a great verse to model our lives after! I will set NO worthless things before my eyes. I went to a medium sized private school all of my elementary and middle school years. In 7th grade I went to a baptist school that had a large campus for a middle school. Now I was a total geek most of my elementary school years who loved to study, go above and beyond, and come home and do extra workbooks I bought just for fun. One lovely day I was at my friend Lindsey's house (she has this cute office room with a couple of computers) looking up websites as resources for this big research paper I had to write. I had looked up so many that day, and my eyes were starting to sting. Have you ever felt that? Anyways, I was nearing the end, and I entered an address. Well, I pushed ENTER and in one millisecond there were ten pop up windows coming up of pornography. I was dying! Envision me, hopping out of my seat, somewhat "gelling" (combo word of yelling and gasping) and banging on the keyboard to get them all to close off my screen. I was totally red in the face, my eyes were so big and said to the world, "Oh my goodness, did anyone else see that?" I mean i was sweating and needed to pace around. As I looked up after all the sites had cleared off my screen, none of my friends were even phased around me! I mean I'm sure they thought I was just a total weirdo :). I was totally mortified! I mean sweat still came for like thirty more minutes. Oh, man, even typing this now I start to get all jittery again. Well, although that story makes me (and hopefully you) laugh as I remember my panic, it also makes a great point that that is how we should be with any WORTHLESS thing that we try to place before our eyes. You might be totally addicted to all things MTV, every show, every reality character, and every Spring Break MTVcast. My friend, you are setting WORTHLESS things before your eyes. Or maybe you (girls) just love your Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Teen People, and Vogue. Again, totally placing WORTHLESS things before your eyes. Purity of your mind and spirit is just as equally as important as purity of your body. When you look on WORTHLESS things your eyes have an image that gets engraved on your heart. You can recall it & dwell on it. When you read romance novels, flip through ads telling you you aren't made right, or watch movies that glamorize drinking and sex, you are placing WORTHLESS things before your eyes. In placing these things in front of our eyes we are trying to find our WORTH, but I promise you you will never find your WORTH in WORTHLESS things. It's just not here, I promise! Commit your eyes and heart to the Lord today. What helps me is to pray a prayer constantly asking the Lord to help me to refrain from putting what is worthless before my eyes. Isaiah 58 also talks about helping other people. I strongly encourage you to live out the I'm THIRD lifestyle!! It is soo rewarding, trust me! I mess up and make myself first, just like any sinful human! But to live out God's first, Others second, I'm third. Is sooo rewarding. Another way I've heard it say is Jesus first, Others second, You third. spelling out JOY.  Trust me, living I'm Third will bring you SO much Joy!! 

"Then your light will shine in the darkness, and you will be bring like sunshine at noon. The Lord will ALWAYS lead you."