Isaiah 41:8-10
Isaiah is speaking in God’s behalf to Jacob, one who had been called as a servant from the ends of the earth. It was Jacob’s and his ancestor’s good fortune to have been chosen instead of rejected. I think of a verse from Psalms, “What is man that God would consider him?” In light of who God is and where Jacob comes from, it seems that we have much in common with him in terms of obscure origins and favored status.
While Jacob was referred to as a servant, God has called us his children. Servants, in the strictest sense, exist to carry out their master’s will from a fear-driven motivation, hoping to avoid punishment. Servants win favor by production and performance. Offspring, on the other hand, delight their father simply by being born into the family and by presuming upon their favored status. True offspring ultimately inherit their father’s attributes and carry out his will with a love-driven motivation born out of the essence of who they are by nature – inheritors, in Christ, of their Father’s DNA and resources.
Sadly (and I speak from experience), even the offspring are not immune from the enemy’s efforts to entangle their identities in religion. If he can leverage our pasts, that are often filled with rejection, and get us working to earn approval, he can condition even a child of God to function as a servant or even a slave. As the deceived offspring work they receive the approval of man. Over time, they can come to see themselves as disciples in good standing while it is no longer on the merit of God’s grace and selection that they stand. Instead, it is on the merits of whatever contribution they perceive they are making and by a moral standing they believe they have achieved. This is a subtle and powerful deception. How much of the Church’s activity is driven by this energy?
Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
Perhaps the litmus test for us in knowing if we are truly living in the fulness of God’s grace is whether or not we are anxiously looking about. We might ask if anxiety isn’t just a natural reaction to threatening circumstances. Can we really alter our level of anxiety as a matter of choice? If this were not so, God would not have commanded us to cease being anxious. So, following this line of reasoning, God must only think of the threat of our circumstances as an issue of our perception. He is saying when we see the threatening circumstance, we must not be tempted to fear because He is our God; He will strengthen us and He will uphold us in the strength of His strong and capable hands.
Would your time alone with God today allow you to pause and list the things that are currently producing anxiety for you? It is not likely that our deceptions will be overthrown unless we can specifically name them. Unless we humble ourselves by owning these places in our hearts where fear is ruling, we cannot adequately repent. Let’s try and find the time to identify the places we are currently allowing anxiety to shape our thoughts and emotions. Let’s then offer them up to God and invite Him in to freshly occupy those spaces in our hearts. And let’s persevere until our identities, as offspring, are fully restored and we are staring down our circumstances, those within and those without, with bold confidence that we are by nature over-comers.
Father, you have forgiven us of our sin; forgive us for trafficking in performance-based religion where we have traded the joy and freedom of offspring for the approval and applause of servants. Pour Your Spirit out upon Your children and deliver us from our deception. Show us each where we are anxiously looking about. Lay the axe to the works-oriented roots that defile our fruit. Rather than the noisy gong we have made with our anxious religious lives, let the world soon hear the laughter of revival and song flowing from bold and celebrant hearts living in stunned awe at Your overwhelming love and Your undeserved mercy and kindness. Amen.