Thoughts from Isaiah

"For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants." Isaiah 44:3

"You heavens above, rain down righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness grow with it..." Isaiah 45:8

A few days ago it began raining in the morning and continued to rain fairly hard for most of the day. These verses got me to thinking...wouldn't it be wonderful if the heavens truly did rain down righteousness? Or if pools of salvation sprung up from the ground and caused righteousness to grow in us? We would all be saturated with righteousness and our salvation would cause righteousness to grow all the more in our hearts! But the Christian life would not, could not be that easy. God means for us to learn lessons in all that He prepares for us and does not just hand a Christian his righteousness all at one time on a silver platter. God works sanctification in our hearts and lives continually over the span of the whole Christian life, making us perfect in the end when we reach Heaven. However, to balance this idea, I believe that we are responsible to strive toward this growth and righteousness as much as we can, rather than saying that God will sanctify us when he is ready with no effort on our part.

So I began to wonder what I could do to strive more after righteousness in my own life. The Lord gave me a lot of things that I could begin doing and a lot that I could stop doing, or certainly do less of. I'm sure if we each made a list there would be certain things that would be individual, but there are a lot of things that we might also have in common. I'll leave that to you to decide what changes need to take place in your own life, but it certainly is good to think about these things. In reality, righteousness does not rain down from the sky or well up from the ground- it has to be whole-heartedly desired, striven for, a frequent request in prayer, and finally granted by God in the Christian life.