"You will keep in perfect peace
all who trust in you,
all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Trust in the LORD always,
for the LORD God is the eternal Rock.
He humbles the proud and
brings down the arrogant city.
He brings it down to the dust.
The poor and oppressed trample it
underfoot, and the needy
walk all over it.
But for those who are righteous,
the way is not steep and rough.
You are a God who does what is right,
and you smooth out the path
ahead of them.
LORD, we show our trust in you by
obeying your laws;
our heart's desire is to glorify your name.
In the night I search for you;
in the morning I earnestly seek you."
- Isaiah 26:3-9 (NLT)
Lately the spiritual mantra that I've tried to set forth for my family is to live by the words of Matthew 6:33. This passage basically says, Seek after the things of God first and foremost, and everything else will fall into place. The first 30-or-so verses of that chapter talk about all the possessions and material matters and agendas we chase after, and how God tends to that stuff for us. So verse 33 exhorts us to try fixating on our Lord and Savior, rather than on those earthly needs and issues, since he's promised to take care of it all anyway.
Always a good M.O. for godly living. But always SO difficult, isn't it? That's why it's great that God provides multiple reminders of the blessings and positives of those who are found seeking God, in many other passages as well, such as this one above, from Isaiah 26.
The point of that whole passage above, and Matthew 6:33:
Stay busy seeking God, and you'll find everything else.
I've often wondered why it is that our Father in heaven makes such a concerted effort to convey through Scriptures that we should fixate on him. In my tainted humanity I ask, "Is he narcissistic? Is he self-centered in a vain way and just wants all eyes on him?"
It usually takes us off in all sorts of convoluted tangents and dangerous philosophical rabbit holes when we try to ascribe the same motives to God for the behavior we often display. After all, even though God does some things men are meant to understand and appreciate, many things - nay, MOST - are just wrought from an intellect and center of being that's so much higher than ours that we just can't grasp it.
So let's use one thing we know is true from God's Word to understand another. If I can honestly say I know the central message of this anthology of ancient manuscripts, the Bible, is God's passionate, merciful, never-giving-up kind of love for mankind, his creation.....then how does this desire of his to always have our eyes on him fit within that?
Eureka! It's cuz he wants us to experience that love! It's cuz he wants us to trust him, and by doing so, to get out of our own way, so the blinders can be lifted and our widened and lifted gaze can fully behold all of the picture of his love.
I have only managed glimpses of this in my lifetime, because I still fail so often to just trust him. I know in my head that he sent his only son to die for my sins, and that such a love must mean he REALLY has my best interests in mind all the time, so it would naturally follow that he'd take care of all the rest too (see Romans 8:32, part of one of my favorite chapters of the Bible). But does my heart follow?
Isaiah says in 26:3, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you."
Perfect peace, huh? Hmmm....
(I'm taking a moment to stop what I'm doing, stare out the window long enough to kind of daydream and picture that, and imagine such a thing...hold on a sec.)
*heaving a long sigh* Oh, to feel such a peace all the time. It's not like being zonked out by a hypnotist. It's not like being high or drunk and you just feel no inhibitions. It's not even so much a feeling of any kind, but rather a state of being. It's a knowledge. It's knowing that I'm never in control of all the moving parts of it all, and that's ok. GOD'S GOT IT.
This Isaiah 26 passage gives us the rundown on how each method of handling worries or going after our own agendas works out. Pretty simple stuff:
Be arrogant, think it's all about me, or trample on others in life - Watch! God will humble me (and, as experience shows, I just won't find what I'm chasing after by my own means. Even if I manage to, it'll be fleeting, and will escape me in time...). Trust in the LORD, however, and leave it all up to him, and, as verse 7 says, he will "smooth out the path ahead of them."
Personally, I'm partial to smooth paths. Whenever I'm going somewhere, literally or proverbially, the smoother the path, the easier and more enjoyable the trip.
Promises of God are worth my believing. I can keep running in circles and getting dizzy over fixating on my own efforts and accountability for things, even the needs and responsibilities of life...Or I can remember that Jesus himself declared God to be "the one thing needful," and trustingly envision all the rest of my worries and needs being tended to.
God doesn't play Hide and Seek. He's always right there. My own crazy search and rescue missions of all the other stuff of life take me off into all these other directions, into thickets and bogs and dense dark forests, or into endless deserts or barren, steep mountainsides, or off into unceasing, bobbing, swelling oceans. I seek the "stuff," and I get lost. I get lost, and then I feel lost.
But then I take my Lord at his word, and go seeking after him. What do I find when I get there?
That he's already busy taking care of the arrangements and needs and concerns anyway. He just wanted me to trust, seek, and find him to know that.
He wants me to fixate on him and thereby see him loving me as only God can. He wants me to catch him in the act of loving me.
That sounds like a pretty awesome design.
