Being asleep at the wheel is no way to drive a car, I’m sure you’ll agree. And yet way too many are asleep at the wheel of their own lives, eyes closed to the road ahead that God has planned. Whether it’s driving a car, or driving your life asleep at the wheel, the outcome’s the same.

Life is full of transitions, isn’t it? If you were able to join me last week on the program you’ll know that at the moment we’re chatting about the uncomfortable transitions that we go through in life, in fact when you stand back and look at it life for the most part seems to be a series of transitions stacked up one after the other.

We go from being a child to being an adult; they call those years our teenage years and anyone who’s been a teenager will know what an awkward, often difficult time those years represent. You feel as though you’re caught between being a child and being an adult, it seems that you’re neither one nor the other. Anyone who’s been a parent of a teenager will definitely know those teenage years are trying times for everyone.

You see it’s this transition thing, from something we know to something we don’t know, from A to B and what we’d like to do is we’d like it to be quick and simple and direct and comfortable and predictable and safe, that’s what we’d like it to be but our journey in life never is, is it?

From single to married, from married to single, from staff member to supervisor to manager, from employed to unemployed, from unemployed to employed, from student to teacher, whatever the change is, whatever the transition is there’s always this awkwardness, an uncomfortableness about it.

I remember at age thirty-six going back to college. Now by this time in my career I was normally the teacher. I’d travelled around the world speaking at conferences, teaching people stuff and yet back at college again here I was to learn something new. I thought to myself on the first day, “How am I going to cope with this? I’m normally the guy up front doing the teaching and yet here I am the student handing in assignments for someone else to grade.”

So we’ve been looking at this whole transition thing by putting ourselves in Israel’s shoes. They’d been exiled in Babylon for seventy years. Why were they there? Because they’d been unfaithful to God. See He’d given them the Promised Land, He’d blessed them enormously, He’d prospered them but somehow they weren’t so good at handling success because let’s face it success sometimes takes some handling. And they’d turned away from God so He punishes them by letting Babylon come and destroy Jerusalem and take God’s people into captivity as slaves where they’ve been when we pick up their story in Isaiah chapter 51 and 52.

So at the end of seventy years of slavery God’s ready to bless them again and take them home back to the Promised Land. You’d think when Isaiah announced that there’d be shouting and dancing in the streets but think about it most of these Israelites have been born there in Babylon in slavery, they’d been there for seventy years and while they’ve heard of the Promised Land it’s a bit like a dream land.

Does it really exist? And hey we’re slaves right? We’re oppressed by the dominant world power of the day, the Babylonians right? How are we ever going to get to see the Promised Land? That’s the reality and when we’re in our version of Babylon, when we’re in that place that we’d rather not be in, come on, how difficult is it for us even to begin to imagine that God would actually restore our lives.

I was listening to a great speaker Bo Stern at a Church I was visiting recently in Lincoln Nebraska. She was telling the story of the difference between her family heritage and her husband’s. See he came from a strong Christian family and she said he was the most positive, most faith filled man she had ever met. She on the other hand was, as she put it, from a family where worrying was seen as a virtue. In fact fear, she said, is my default mode.

Don’t you love that? Fear is my default mode – and that my friend is true for many of us. Most of us respond to uncertainty and transition with fear rather than faith. That’s where Israel was; they needed some convincing that God was actually going to bless them. That’s where many people are today. How about you?

So God sends them Isaiah and as we saw last week three times in chapter 51 of the Book of Isaiah God says to His people, ‘Listen to me! Listen to me! Listen to me!’ It’s like that alarm clock at 6 o’clock in the morning going ring, ring, ring. What’s He trying to do? He’s trying to get their attention, He’s trying to wake them up and in fact that’s the very next thing He says to them, and we’re going to look at that today, He said, “Wake up!”

Let’s see what God had to say to His people back then and what He’s saying to you and me about His plans and purposes for us today, Isaiah chapter 52, verses 1 to 6:

Awake, awake, put on your strength O Zion, put on your beautiful garments O Jerusalem, the Holy city. For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more. Shake yourself from the dust, rise up O captive Jerusalem, loose the bonds from your neck O captive daughter Zion.

For thus says the Lord God, you were sold for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money for thus says the Lord, long ago my people went down into Egypt to reside there as aliens, the Assyrians too has oppressed them without cause. Now therefore what am I doing here says the Lord, seeing that my people are taken away without cause?

Their rulers howl, says the Lord and continually all day long my name is despised. Therefore my people shall know my name, therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak. Here am I.

God’s shouting to them, “People, wake up!” You know what it’s like when you first wake up out of that deep sleep, you’re kind of groggy and disoriented and if your default mode is fear and you’re travelling through your difficult place, your health issue, your marriage issue, your family issue, your money issue, your whatever, when you’re in that place and your default mode is fear it’s like you need some waking up.

To wake up from that drowsiness of that negativity to the potential, the amazing future that God has for you, we need to get dressed in the garment of praise, we need to put on the strength we have in Christ. We need to shake the dust off our attitude where it’s settled from lack of movement because fear has a tendency to paralyse us, we kind of sit there, we lie there and hope it’s all going to change. We need to loose the bonds of the captivity to our circumstances that are choking us.

What a beautiful picture. The Hebrews are great at this picture language. But what God is wanting His people to wake up to, to yet another nightmare? No. God is wanting them to wake up to the fact that by His sovereign will and His immense power He’s already started doing some amazing stuff.

That the God of their fathers is going to redeem them without money, in other words He’s going to do it Himself. He’s already doing it and it’s going to cost them nothing, no work, no effort because God is in this. “Wake up to what I’m doing here people.” That’s what  God’s saying to Israel and my friend I believe that’s what He’s saying to you and to me today.

When we’re in that dark and difficult place of transition, from something we know to something we don’t, from something that’s uncomfortable to something that may not be as comfortable and familiar, we almost want to be asleep, it’s our default mode, we’re not expecting God to move.

I’m not saying He’s always going to wave a magic wand and solve every problem, that may not be his plan but He may have a plan to fill you with the exquisite knowledge of His presence, the sort that’s only available in the dark places you’re in. The sort of knowledge of the presence of God and His healing and comforting spirit that simply wouldn’t be as poignant or as powerful in a place of light as it is in a place of darkness.

Whatever God’s plan is for you, let me tell you He does have a plan for good. He has a mighty purpose for your life whether you’re eight or whether you’re eighty. “WAKE UP my child, wake up to the plan that I have for you.” That’s what God is saying.

See the stuff we can end up missing out on when we’re not into God’s Word. Wake up!

Every now and then, God says the strangest things. One of the things He talks about in His Word is … beautiful feet. He does it to get our attention. And when God wants our attention, you know, it’s probably worth paying attention. Beautiful feet … what’s that all about?

Just the other day I was driving down a freeway from downtown Chicago out to the O’Hare airport and I saw one of those big bill boards advertising the Illinois lottery telling me that I could win up to ten thousand dollars a week for the next twenty years. Mmm, if someone could guarantee me that I would win that prize, half a million dollars a year for the next twenty years, so that’s ten million, would that brighten up my day? Yeah I think it might at least it would have a moderately positive effect on my mood.

I know that money is not everything, of course it isn’t but not to have to think about money anymore, that would be kind of cool. So whilst there may be some money issues that I could be travelling through at the moment, if someone brought me the good news that I’d won that lottery prize, yeah that would definitely brighten up my day.

Of course you have to buy a ticket to win the lottery and I haven’t so I’m not going to win but you get my point. Good news about tomorrow brightens up today and there are probably just one or two people, perhaps you’re one of them, who need a bit of good news about their tomorrow.

Like the nation of Israel a few hundred years before Christ when they were coming towards the end of their time in exile in slavery in Babylon back in around about 520 BC give or take a few years. We talked about them last week on the program. Most of them had been born in slavery, most of them had never known anything except slavery and they desperately needed some good news, as we’ve seen if you’ve been able to join me. God was on the move.

He’d forgiven them all the things they’d done back there in the Promised Land all those years before when they had turned their backs on Him and He was about to restore them back to the Promised Land. But to someone who’s only used to bad news sometimes it’s really hard to get the good news through. God had to shake them and to wake them up and He used Isaiah the Prophet to do that as we’ve seen so far in looking at this story.

And of course you and I can be like that too. If all we’ve had is bad news for a long while it’s kind of hard to wrap our hearts around good news. It’s hard to have hope for tomorrow when the circumstances of yesterday and today are screaming at us, ‘There is no hope’. Are you with me? Sure you are, you’ve been there at that rock bottom point out there on the battlefield when the enemy, whoever or whatever that enemy has been in your life, is threatening to overwhelm you. When your Babylon has enslaved you and robbed you apparently of all your freedom.

So the old Isaiah has been waking and shaking God’s people telling them that God is on the move, that good things are just around the corner. It’s not an easy message to get through to them or to you or to me, correct? So God causes Isaiah to say something that’s really going to get our collective attention. Have a listen, Isaiah chapter 52, verses 7 to 10: 

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion ‘your God reigns’. Listen your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.

Break forth together into singing you ruins of Jerusalem for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Beautiful feet, what the blazes is God talking about? Have you looked at your feet lately, hardly the most attractive part of your anatomy are they? Leave them in a pair of socks and shoes for too long they get a bit smelly too. God is nothing if not an edgy communicator.

You know how sometimes advertisers will use shock tactics to get your attention, to stand out from the crowd, to get their message noticed. That is in effect what God is doing here. He’s grabbing our attention; He’s grabbing your attention and my attention. Come on, if someone brought you good news that you won ten million in the Illinois lottery you could kiss their feet couldn’t you? That’s the picture here. This isn’t just good news, it’s not even just great news or fantastic news, it’s stunningly brilliant, totally life changing news.

God has a plan to save His people Israel back then and you and me today and it’s the sort of news that should have us singing and dancing in the streets.

Listen you sentinels lift up your voices, together sing for joy, for in plain sight you can see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together in singing you ruins of Jerusalem for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.

There are some joys, some pleasures, some delights that are only available to you when all around is darkness and gloom. I can tell you that not because I’m reading it here in the Book of Isaiah but because I’ve experienced it myself. In the days when all that I held dear had been taken from me, the days were so black and the nights were even darker and nothing that anybody said or did made one iota of difference to the pain and isolation that I felt.

See pain is a uniquely individual and isolating experience. You suffer alone on the inside even when there are people around you to comfort you. But there’s just one thing that cuts through the darkness with a gently light so warm, so incredibly beautiful, that there’s simply no words to describe it and that my friend is the voice of God saying, ‘I have come to comfort you. I have come to redeem you.’

The people who came to bring me that news, I’m picturing their faces right now, I could kiss their feet. And once I was able to light my candle at the flame that burned in their hearts, it burned ever brighter in mine. Once I met Jesus in my black hole He became my friend and my companion and my comforter in a way that no one else could ever have been or has ever been to me.

He came to save me and to lift me out of that pit. Something He did even while the circumstances around me were still against me. The joy of meeting Jesus in that dark place is a pleasure so exquisite that I wouldn’t swap those dark days for ten million or a hundred million or a hundred billion because the Lord has bared His Holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

The good news is that God is on your side. That doesn’t mean He’ll always see things the way you do or do things the way you want Him to. We, of course, only see a small part of the puzzle, He sees the whole picture and His plans and purposes go way, way beyond whatever we could imagine but in the face of the most terrifying inky blackness that I ever faced in my life I remember experiencing a joy, a peace that goes way beyond any words that I could ever find to describe it.

And that’s why I’m here today to bring you good news, great tidings that your God reigns, your God is on the move in your life and today and tomorrow and the next day He has a future for you that you can’t begin to imagine.

When I was in those dark days, almost twenty years ago now, I couldn’t have seen how I was going to make it to the next day let alone the next twenty years. If you had told me back then that I would be telling millions of people around the world the good news of Jesus, that I’d be the one with the privilege of bringing you the good news that your God reigns today, I would never have believed you in a million years.

I know that God has a future planned for each one of us and that includes you and it’s a future that is so far beyond anything that you can imagine or picture. It’s better than winning that lottery because it involves Jesus in your life. That’s good news and that’s the news that Jesus asked me to bring to you today. May He bless your socks off.

When someone gives you good news, you don’t just sit there do you? You find some way to celebrate. Because good news is worth celebrating. So why is it that when God gives us THE good news, sometimes, we just … sit there?

Yesterday and in fact over this past week and a bit we’ve been talking about the fact that God has some great news for us and that news is that no matter what’s going on, no matter how bad or how bleak or how hopeless your situation may feel, He is here. He is doing stuff for you. He is determined to bless you and He has a plan for your life that’s going to rock your socks off.

Hang on Berni, where do you get that stuff from? Like I hear some people saying, well I got it from the Bible, from the Book of Isaiah chapters 51 and 52 to be precise and no, I’m not here to promise you you’re going to win the lottery and have a big car and a big house and a big bank balance, that’s rubbish. What I’m here to tell you is that your God is so in love with you that He feels every ache and every pain, He knows how you feel and He knows even better than you do how to comfort you and heal you and bless you.

Remember we’ve been listening to what Gods been saying to His people Israel towards the end of their time in exile in slavery, their time of punishment in Babylon. Isaiah chapter 52, verses 7 to 10:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘your God reigns’. Listen, your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.

Break forth together in singing you ruins of Jerusalem for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Israel. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Now you can believe it or not believe it. There are plenty of people out there who want to wallow around in their pain and misfortune until the end of time. And look, I’m not being harsh here. When something bad happens, when we lose a loved one, when we get a bad medical diagnosis, when a marriage falls apart or we got to work in the morning only to come home in the afternoon without a job of course it knocks the wind out of us.

We go through all sorts of emotions, shock, pain, anger, fear, resentment. There’s a whole cycle that we go through in that grieving process, that’s natural and if you’re in that cycle somewhere at the moment I am not knocking that, please understand me. But at some point we have to get up off the canvas, at some point we have to accept the fact that the world’s changed and get on with the business of living.

I know people who are in the business of being perpetual victims; it’s their default mode. They always look at the glass and decide that it’s half empty and they’ve lived their lives like there’s some water shortage going on. I’m going to bring you some good news today: your God reigns and He is determined to get you through what you’re going through and He is determined to bless you in His own way and His own time. Believe it or not.

The question is what response is God looking for from us when He lays out the good news before us the way He is at the moment? When God speaks and as I read you the Word of God from Isaiah that’s exactly what He’s doing make no mistake, when God speaks His blessing into your heart what response is He looking for? Well we know that because in the very next verse, Isaiah chapter 52, verse 11 He tells us. He says this:

Depart, depart, go out from here. Touch no unclean thing, go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves you who carry the vessels of the Lord.

Hang on, what’s that all about? Well let’s understand it in the context of what’s going on in the history of Israel as God speaks to them. They’d been in slavery for seventy years in Babylon, God’s about to restore them and bringing them the fantastic news we’ve been talking about this last little while and they’re struggling to understand that.

Three times in Isaiah chapter 51 God has had to say to them, ‘Listen to me! Listen to me! Listen to me!’ and then as we’ve seen He says, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ God’s like an alarm clock here trying to get their attention and now He’s giving them the next piece in the puzzle, ‘Don’t just lie there. You’ve got to get up from that nice warm comfortable bed you’ve made for yourself and hit the track Jack because I’m doing something and if you want to get with what I’m doing, what I’m up to, you’d better get up and go.’

For Israel that meant they had to get used to the fact that they were leaving Babylon. That might at first blush sound like fantastic news. They’re going from slavery to freedom, that’s what God’s been telling them here through the Prophet Isaiah, they’re going from Babylon back to the Promised Land. Great news, you think?!

Here’s what Isaiah was running into with the people. They’d become comfortable in their slavery. Okay they were slaves but they had a roof over their heads, they had food on their tables, they were safe. What? Leave Babylon? Are you crazy?

The same thing had happened centuries before as they fled Egypt under the leadership of Moses. They were only a few miles into the wilderness and they turned on Moses and said in effect, ‘what have you done? It’s risky out here, it’s uncomfortable and uncertain out here, better we should have stayed back in Egypt, at least there we were safe and we had food.’

There’s nothing new under the sun. We all behave like that today because we prefer the certainty of our despair. Listen to me; we prefer the certainty of our despair to the uncertainty of a future out there on a journey to the Promised Land. God promises a whole bunch of stuff but to get it we have to pick up our cross and follow Jesus and die to ourselves in order to gain our new lives in Christ. Listen again to that one verse.

Depart, depart, go out from here. Touch no unclean thing, go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves you who carry the vessels of the Lord.

Don’t just sit there get going and along the way stay pure and holy, don’t mix with the rubbish that the world’s dangling under your noses as though it was a viable alternative to the holiness and perfection of God. Don’t think you can have a foot in both camps, one on God’s journey and one on staying back in the world which is the place that put you in slavery to start with.

It’s like standing and waiting for your luggage at the airport, having one foot on the ground and the other on the moving conveyor belt. That works for like half a second and then we end up flat on our face. It’s one or the other. Its stay stuck in your present circumstances or get out there on the road, get moving God’s way on God’s journey to God’s destination for your life, so come on which one is it going to be?

When the shock of the impact is over, when you’ve come to the point where you can function again after a tough time, even though it’s still tough, even though it’s still uncertain and uncomfortable and maybe fearful, are you going to get moving with God’s plan for your life or not?

What does that mean? What does that look like? It means pressing into God, starting to function again in your gifting, helping other people, serving other people, seeking hard after God and in that a journey begins somewhere. Journeys don’t happen by lying in bed and listening to the alarm clock and pulling the covers over our head.

The journey begins when we hear to call of God, when we feel Him shaking us saying, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ The journey my friend begins when we take those first steps because He has said to us:

Depart, depart, go out from here.

A builder may have an architect’s plans in his hands but unless he digs a hole and pours the foundations and puts the frame on top and starts laying the bricks row upon row upon row, day after day after day, friend there is not going to be a house. An architect’s plans do not equal a house. There will be no house unless the builder starts building it.

There are way too many people who have heard God’s call for their lives, who have heard God say, ‘Wake up, get going, I’ve got a plan for you’, and then with all their strength they pull their covers up over their heads, they lie there and they complain that they don’t know what God’s plan for their life is.

Well, I don’t know, God’s Word is pretty simple. Wake up! Get out of bed, get going and get into His plan.

Anyone who believes in God has heard the theory about trusting in God. The theory’s easy. It’s the practice that takes some learning. So how can we learn to trust Him – not in theory, in practice?

I was recently confronted with a situation that really tested my faith. You see I don’t want you to think just because I happen to be this smooth voice on the radio that I somehow get an exemption stamp on my passport from the turbulence of the journey. In fact probably the opposite is the case because I’m out here sharing the fantastic news of Jesus with people all around the world every day of the week through these radio programs. And I reckon the devil’s got me in his sights. I reckon I’ve got a target painted on my chest as far as he’s concerned.

So here’s what was going on. There was one particular country, one of the world’s most populous countries where our team has been working to get these programs to air on a radio station with a huge audience. I mean the daily audience for this program was going to be over one million people. That’s actual listeners.

That’s a big deal; I mean one listener is a big deal to me but a million? Can’t even begin to imagine that many people. Okay, it’s a big deal. We’d been working on this for two years this project including finding translators and a voice to record the messages in the local vernacular language.

Quite an investment of time and effort and money and then the day came when finally the radio network in question accepted the program and placed it in a prime time slot. Amazing stuff. We rejoiced, we gave thanks, really. It had been such a long road and so much was at stake, so many lives, so many people to hear the good news of Jesus.

On the first day we were due to go to air they told us, well we can accept the program for a moment but in a few weeks time we’re having a review of the externally provided programs that we take right across the network and we don’t know what that’s going to mean for you.

When our team in that country got in touch with me to tell me the news they were completely gutted. I can understand how they felt, all that effort and now all of a sudden the whole thing was up in the air again, devastating. What would happen?

I’ll share my reaction to that whole thing in a moment but first I want to go to what Isaiah has to say into situations just like that. Remember if you’ve been able to join me these past few programs you’ll know that Israel at the point where we pick up their story, has now been in slavery in Babylon for seventy years, since about 586 587 BC.

And God comes to them through His Prophet Isaiah and He brings them some good news, the news that He’s about to set them free, that they were about to return to the Promised Land. Whoop, you would think. But just like you and me when everything is bleak they struggled to digest the good news.

You know what it’s like when all your circumstances are screaming doom and gloom at you it’s very hard to believe that something good is about to happen. Even if you believe in God, even if you’ve put your trust in Jesus, even if you’ve heard a million sermons on trusting God, when your Goliath comes stomping in to your life with weapons of mass destruction pointed right at you, yeah believing that God is there to protect you, that God has a good plan for your life is not particularly easy.

It wasn’t easy for Israel way back then and it’s not easy for you and me today. So here’s what God says to His people through the Prophet Isaiah. Have a listen, Isaiah chapter 52, verse 12:

For you shall not go out in haste and you shall not go in flight for the Lord will go before you and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

You see they were going to leave Babylon and their slavery behind but how does that actually happen, they’d been wondering? Babylon is the world’s global power of the day, the super power, the most fiercesome and powerful army on the planet. Are we going to have to run for our lives? Are some of us going to be killed? How’s it going to happen?

It’s all well and good for Isaiah to be carrying on about this good news but what if the guy’s nuts, what if he’s wrong, what if God doesn’t show up? Have you ever had those thoughts? Have they crossed your mind when you’ve been between a rock and a hard place and you’ve read God’s Word and heard some good news and you thought, well you know but how’s all that going to work?

Well that’s what Israel was going through and so God points back to a time when He’s done exactly that same thing for them before. He’s pointing back to a time in their history that every man, woman and child knows from top to bottom, inside out, back to front because it’s been handed down from generation to generation for centuries.

He’s pointing back to the Exodus of course, their escape from Egypt. Remember they fled and God hardened Pharaohs heart and so the greatest army of that time, Egypt, came after them. In front of them was the Red Sea – a totally uncrossable body of water for a million men, women and children – and behind them coming up fast was the mightiest army on the planet. Here it is, Exodus chapter 13, verses 21 and 22. This is the story the Israelites were remembering when Isaiah was speaking to them. 

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them along the way and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night ever left its place at the front of the people.

So God went ahead of them but what about the rear as the Egyptians closed in? Exodus chapter 14, verses 19 to 21: 

The angel of the Lord who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel and so the cloud was there with the darkness and it lit up the night and one did not come near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all the night and it turned the sea into dry land and the waters were divided.

See there it is, God went ahead of them and then when they had trouble behind God moved and went behind them between them and the Egyptian army, He led them and opened the way and He protected them from attack from the rear. So when God now promises all these centuries later to do exactly the same, what’s He doing? Is He asking the Israelites to rely on blind faith? Is He asking them to conjure up a courage that they don’t have? No. He’s asking them to look back at what He’s already done.

That’s the amazing thing with God; He never takes us to a point where we can’t take it. Each challenge He comes through and so next time when a challenge is bigger and scarier than the last time He says to us, ‘look back on what I’ve already done in your life’. See we forget that each time, we forget He’s already proven Himself faithful and true. Oh yeah, He did that last time. Of course and in fact as I look back He’s always come through, He’s always been there, He’s always somehow made a way and made it happen and there is the bedrock of our faith this time.

When I heard the bad news about that radio program in that country here’s my reaction. I said to our staff, ‘We have seen this happen so many times’. Today God has tens of millions of people listening to this very same program that you’re listening to right now in over a hundred and sixty countries around the world.

There were so many times where we shouldn’t have ended up on radio stations and God opened the door, God went ahead of us and there are so many times when this ministry should have folded because there weren’t enough resources but God brought up our rear. He trained me to trust Him over and over again by putting me deliberately between a rock and a hard place and showing me that He would show up and make things happen.

You know what, after a while even someone who is as spiritually thick as me starts to get it. We don’t have to listen to the theory because God has a plan to show us in practice over and over again and when He does He proves Himself true. He teaches us in our experience that this verse is absolutely true. 

For you shall not go out in haste and you shall not go in flight for the Lord will go before you and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

God is teaching us to stop sweating it, He’s teaching us that at each and every transition and trial and temptation that He is faithful and true. What an awesome Dad, what an awesome God.

I wish I could tell you that I had an answer for making everything in your life better. But faith in God, well, it doesn’t work like that. What I can share with you though is a secret that brings peace, comfort and courage right in the middle of the trials of life. And it’s a secret worth knowing.

I would love to be able to tell you today that I have a secret that can take all the uncertainty and change and surprises out of your journey. I’d love to be able to tell you that. I’d love to be able to tell you that I have a secret that will take the wrinkles and lumps and bumps out of your life. But alas no, I’d be lying if I told you that. There’s no such thing.

Every life is a journey, every life has surprises and every life takes twists and turns that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves. The sooner we get used to that truth the better. “It’s just not fair”, I hear you say. Well whether it’s fair or unfair, whatever, the reality is that there isn’t a perfect life out there that’s all peaches and cream.

We kind of kid ourselves that there is. We aspire to living a life like that but I’ve been racking my brain and so far as I know there’s not a single person who I’ve ever met who can tell me that their life has been perfect. But what I can share with you is this, the amazing truth that in the midst of the imperfections and the storms and the onslaughts, in the midst of the disappointments and tragedies and loneliness’s that we find ourselves in there is an answer.

There is an answer that brings joy and peace right into the middle of those trials, a special kind of joy and peace that’s in fact only available in those difficult times.

Hope you’ve been able to join me these past few weeks on the program because we’ve been talking about a huge transition that the nation of Israel faced. From the certainty, such as it was, from their slavery and captivity in Babylon, seventy years of it, to the uncertainty of God’s blessing as He set out to restore their freedom and take them back to the Promised Land to rebuild Jerusalem, to rebuild the wall, to rebuild the temple.

It’s ironic that we’re often more comfortable with an ugly certainty than a potentially beautiful uncertainty. But as we saw yesterday that’s just the way it is, we are. And so through the Prophet Isaiah as we’ve been tracking through chapters 51 and 52 of that Book in the Old Testament, we’ve seen God rousing His people and convincing them of the amazingly beautiful journey ahead of them back to the Promised Land. Have a listen, Isaiah chapter 52, verses 4 to 6. God says through Isaiah:

Listen to me my people and give heed to me my nation, for a teaching will go out from me and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly, my salvation has gone out and my arms will rule the peoples, the coastlands wait for me and for my arm they hope.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and those who live on it will die like gnats. But my salvation will be forever and my deliverance will never be ended.”

See it’s a beautiful promise of deliverance but as we’ve seen Israel’s been struggling with that. So the question is, in the middle of that struggle what’s the answer, where do we turn, where do we find the courage and the strength and the peace and the calmness that we need to believe in God through the trials?

Well this is the really exciting bit, this is the end of these two chapters, unbeknown to the Israelites in that 6th century BC, before Christ, what Isaiah gives them is a prophecy, a prophecy that will be fulfilled centuries later, a prophecy about the one who would bring the comfort of God into their very midst, a prophecy about Jesus. Are you ready for it? Isaiah 52, verse 13 through to chapter 53, verse 6:

See my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him, so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of mortals. So he shall startle many nations, kings will shut their mouths because of him, for that which had not been told them they shall see and that which they have not heard they shall contemplate.

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form, no majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others would hide their faces as though he was despised and held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our inequities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have all turned to our own way but the Lord has laid on him the inequity of us all.

And it goes on to talk more and more about Jesus in Isaiah chapter 53. See this is truly amazing, centuries before that starry night on which Jesus was born in that stable in Bethlehem, God, through Isaiah’s prophecy, tells us exactly what this Jesus will be like. Jesus the suffering servant; Jesus the plain ordinary man who will bear our sin, whose suffering would set us free; Jesus the Son of God who would show us exactly how much this God of ours loves us – a God who not only does things powerfully for His people but a God who would come into our very midst and suffer for us.

This is what sets this God apart from all the other so called gods, it’s the fact that He shows up, that He walks thirty or more years in our shoes on the dusty highways and byways of life, this Jesus who understands our suffering not merely because He is the Son of God but because He came and became one of us and suffered like us and for us, dying a terrible death that we might live.

My friend with all my heart I tell you that this Jesus is your answer. You may be going through trials and tribulations, you may be going through indescribable suffering, you may be going through an exhausting and uncomfortable transition in your life but Jesus has been there ahead of you and He knows how you feel, what you’re going through, the pain and the loneliness, hallelujah. God is the God who suffered for me and for you and that is the answer. He is the answer.

When you pray to God in the name of Jesus you’re praying through the Jesus who knows you, who knows your journey better than you know them yourself because He’s been there.

I want to leap forward now to something in the New Testament about Jesus, this Jesus who wants to bring you peace, this Jesus who wants to be your companion on this journey so that you are never ever alone again. Just before He was crucified this is what He said to His disciples:

If you love me you’ll keep my commandments and I’ll ask my Father and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever. This is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him but you know him because he abides with you and he will be in you.

I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me but you will see me because I live you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me and those who love me will be loved by my Father and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

Hallelujah! Because Jesus is on the journey with you. He’s on my journey with me. We’re not orphaned, we’re not alone, we’re never alone, we’re never without Him. Have you asked Jesus into your life? Have you called out to this God in His mighty name? If you have He dwells in you, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in you to hold you and to comfort you and to strengthen you and to guide you.

That’s the God honest truth and it’s a truth I will tell you with my dying breath because it’s the most important truth I know. Friend there is a light at the end of the tunnel.