WAKE UP! LIVE IN DESTINY!
Isaiah 52:1-2 (NIV 1984) Awake, awake, O Zion, clothe yourself with strength. Put on your garments of splendor … Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned …. Free yourself from the chains on your neck ….
We have seven imperatives here: awake, clothe, put on, shake off, rise up, sit enthroned, and free yourself. These are specific words for a specific nation being called by God to embrace its salvation and live in its designed destiny, but can the follower of Christ find some nuggets of principle in this? By the way, salvation is not only our initial regeneration and new birth, it is the ongoing deliverance we can experience as we grow in our faith. The word “salvation” is used in scripture to refer to both. While salvation only belongs to our God (Rev 7:10), there are specific things we can do that lay hold of it. We are not static beings enslaved to fate, merely puppets on a string controlled by some master play-write, completely void of choice. God invites us into the process. The invitation was spoken clearly: “Come to me …” (Matt 11:28). The power behind it is the Father’s drawing (Jn 6:44); and the fact that we can even do so is made possible through the atoning work of the cross (Heb 4:16; 10:19-22). The stage is set. God has laid out the red carpet for our salvation. The choice lies with us, now. Shall we take Him up on the invitation, or ignore it?
Seven responses here track our entering into our own designed destiny. Let’s look at one. We must awaken. The Christian is prone to wander, as the old hymn goes. We can get dull in our spirits, fall asleep at the wheel, blind to our own spiritual lethargy and the hellish advancements flourishing all around us. You can hear it in modern preaching that touches nothing of relevance, in spite of its unending efforts and attempts to make theology practical. You see it in modern Christian subculture where worldly ideas continue to push its boundaries. Things that were unthinkable 20 years ago are now normal in many christian environments: couples living together before marriage, filthy mouths, soft stances on homosexuality, radical feminism, and unfiltered entertainment, just to name a few. James says pure religion is to look after orphans and widows, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the word (Jms 1:27). How are we scoring on the Pure Religion Personality Test? For us to move the right direction in our holiness before the Lord, we must wake up. We must interpret the signs of the times in which we live (Matt 16:3), and we cannot do so if we are slumbering; rather, we must see the corruption that lies about our society, and see it in our own compromised living. When someone’s house is on fire, love sounds an alarm loudly to wake them up and save their life. God will go to extremes to try to wake us from our slumber, and this is not mean and uncaring, but God, graciously and lovingly, giving us a rude awakening. Our first step toward fulfilled living, out of seven, is to wake up, and this waking up is a choice.
