Isaiah 55 (NIV84)
1 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
James 4:8a (NLT) Come close to God, and God will come close to you.
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
- God is always close to us, but we are not always aware of it
Psalm 145:18 (NIV) The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
Psalm 34:18 (NIV) The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Acts 17:27b (NLT2) “[God] is not far from any one of us.”
Psalm 139:7-8 (NLT2) I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! 8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
- The problem is not on God’s end, it’s on ours
Matthew 15:8 (NIV) “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’”
Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23 (NLT)
3b Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell…:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Romans 8:7–17 (NIV84) (T)he sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
Romans 8:9–11 (MSG) But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
“He who has ears, let him hear.”