In Our Own Way

www.bible.com/1713/isa.53.6.csb

Have you ever gotten in your own way? I mean, have you ever caught yourself sabotaging your own needs and desires? That may sound odd, but people do it all the time. They sabotage their happiness, their joy, even their wants, but especially their needs. Often we do this for unselfish reasons. We will give up what we want to satisfy what someone else wants. Mothers and fathers do this often for the sake of their children. Friends and siblings do this for one another.

But a darker form of this occurs when you know you ought to do the right thing, and the right things would be much better for you (like taking medication for a health issue) but you sabotage yourself and ignore it, or ignore the visit to the doctor, or eat sweets )as a diabetic) or take another drink (as an alcoholic), etc. Your temporary pleasure sabotages your well-being.

I want you to consider this now on a spiritual scale. Since this is what Isaiah is after this morning. How do you sabotage yourself spiritually? Isaiah says each of us has gone his own way. And I’m afraid, we have gotten in our own way, that is we have sabotaged our own well-being by bad behaviors, namely sin. Thus the Lord has punished Him, our Savior Jesus Christ, for the iniquity of us all. God’s attempt to rescue us from our own self-sabotage is to send His Son, with a message of hope and faith, but to suffer in Himself the penalty for our sins. All this in the hope we will get out of our own way and into His. We are lost. We have been lost ever since we seized the map of our lives and tried to interpret it for ourselves. There is no GPS or self-help manual that will help us be found again. We have to call upon the name of the Lord, the One who wrote the map, from wherever we are if we will be found.

If this has helped you on a Saturday morning, then I hope it has encouraged you to find your way back to the Lord, the Master and Director. May He guide you to His way today, and help to find others that are lost.

Dear Father, I know each of us has worked hard to wander. Like the alcoholic, the diabetic, we have continued to do those things we know are wrong, and not good for us, seduced by the siren song of sin. But Lord, I am grateful You came all those years ago to show us a new path, the way home. Praise be to the Lord of Heaven and Earth. May Your name be praised forevermore. In that Name we pray today, Amen.