Father God,

Today, I pray that You would press the truth of Isaiah 42:23-24 into the hearts and minds of today’s church. In that day, Isaiah asked “who?” would heed the call to recognize the Lord as the one behind all things that come upon us and our response to Him is what matters.

The Israelites needed to learn that it was not their cleverness in manipulating situations, in political cunning, or in the secondary causes they could see. Isaiah pressed heavily upon them the reality that the Lord was the primary cause of all things they faced.

Today, we in the church can fall into trusting our cleverness in bypassing God’s commands, in trusting our own strength to stand against the world, or in thinking that we are solely at the mercy of this world’s fate. Make the church see that our past, present, and future lie in the hands of a merciful God who calls us to repentance and obedience.

Forgive us, oh Lord.

In Christ’s Name,

Amen.