A Prayer Against Legalism and a Religious Spirit
Isaiah 29 gives us a sobering warning that religious activity can continue even when our hearts have drifted far from God. Jerusalem maintained its festivals and outward expressions of worship, yet spiritual blindness and complacency had taken root. It is possible to preserve the form of faith while losing the intimacy, obedience, and power that should accompany it. As you pray today, ask the Holy Spirit to deliver you from empty religion, entitlement, and spiritual passivity, and to give you a heart that remains close to God, alert to His voice, and fully engaged in what He has called you to do.
Prayer
Father, Jerusalem thought they were immune from attack because they had pure worship. The biggest problem is their hearts were far from You. Their festivals were not holy moments encountering You, but useless holidays with no God in the celebration. They were all form and no power. They couldn’t envision that these international problems would come knocking on their door. Help me to learn from their mistakes. Give me a heart that’s close to You. Deliver me from an entitlement mindset that believes I deserve kickbacks from You. This produces passivity and disengagement from the problems You’ve called me to solve. You’re the sovereign God and I’ll serve You in the times of great ease and difficulty. Circumstance will not determine my fervor. I refuse to put my head in the sand. Give me the prudence to see potential problems and the drive to deal with them. I’ll not procrastinate in any area of my life in the name of Jesus, the engaged God, amen.
Isaiah 29:1-10
Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on. Yet I will besiege Ariel; she will mourn and lament, and she will be to me like an altar hearth. I will encamp against you on all sides; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you. Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper.
But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant, the Lord Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire. Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night—as when a hungry person dreams of eating but awakens hungry still, as when a thirsty person dreams of drinking but awakens faint and thirsty still. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.
Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer. The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes, the prophets; he has covered your heads, the seers.
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