Prepare your heart for this thought:
My
way? or the Highway?
Isaiah 40:3
A voice of one
calling:
"In the desert prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight in the wilderness a highway
for our God."
Matthew 3:1-3
In those days John
the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of
Judea and saying,
"Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near. This
is he who was spoken of through the prophet
Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert,
prepare the way for the Lord, make straight
paths for him".
I love how God told Isaiah
to prepare a way for the Lord in the desert and
to make a straight highway in the wilderness for
God.
WOW.... can we just catch this picture in our
heads a minute....... God wants us to prepare
the way for the Lord to be with us at the
moments we are in the deserts and wilderness of
our life and he wants us to make a straight
highway for him to travel on while we are in
that wilderness and desert. Why is that???
I believe that God wants us
to know that when life is dry and hard and we
feel lost and overwhelmed by the heat of the
moment that we must at that very moment in time
choose to prepare our hearts for the Lord to be
able to come quickly to our aid. He wants for us
to be willing to make a way for him to get to
our hearts at that moment of trouble, AKA.....a
highway not a small dirt road. A highway implies
a quick, straight smooth road with lots of wind
and no stop signs. The alternate opposite route
would be a dirt road which would leave you
feeling dirty and shook up from the bumps. God
wants to send the wind of his Holy Spirit to
refresh you in the desert but the devil wants to
shake you up and make you feel dirty.
God wants to come to you
quickly in your moment of loneliness or failure
or in that moment when you feel overwhelmed by
life. He wants you to build a highway, to build
a way to your heart that allows him to come
quick and swift to your aid and comfort. But if
while you are in a wilderness or desert of fear,
hatred, loneliness or sin you build walls of
resentment toward God or man then you are not
making a straight path for God to come to your
heart and comfort you. You are building not a
highway but a dirt road that leads to a dead end
ditch.
Repentance makes a straight
way in your heart and it builds that highway to
finding relief.
Repentance makes your heart wider, bigger and
stronger. Like a highway for the Lord to travel
quickly and swiftly on.
If you refuse to repent or to forgive others
while you are in the desert of your life, you
are building a road full of pot holes and lined
with deep ditches that you will someday fall
into.
Repentance fills in the holes and makes your
soul ready to receive all that God has prepared
for you through his Son Jesus Christ.
John the Baptist is a great
example of a voice calling in the wilderness. He
preached the truth during heat and drought and
that lead others to an oasis of life. Are you
willing to call out truth during times of
drought in your life? Are you willing to make
your crooked thoughts straight with the truth of
Christ? Are you willing to build a highway of
repentance that will restore your path to God?
And are you willing to let God use you so that
others can get out of the dirt and onto the
highway of life in Christ?
Jesus is the highway to
God,
Satan is a dirt road to self destruction.
If your heart has been
touched, please feel free to email me at:
Jina@preparingyourheart.com
Thank you |
