Women of Warren Vlog – Spring Loaded with Compassion

good morning i hope you're having a great start to your week this morning so the question for us to prayerfully consider today is who do we know god to be second question does that head knowledge trickle down into a firm belief in who God is that actually changes the way that we live so that we truly live differently because we know who God is. The whole Bible is filled with revelation about its author. I especially love passages in the Bible where the Lord is talking to one of his servants and he uses very clear plain language to describe who he is. One of the early accounts of that is in Exodus chapter 34 and the context of this passage is that Moses is receiving the second set of stone tablets from the Lord written with the words of God of his Ten Commandments for his people. In chapter 33, in verse 18, Moses had just made a very bold request of the Lord and said, show me your glory. And then in Exodus 34, Moses is with the Lord, receiving the second set of the Ten Commandments. And picking up in verse 5 of Exodus 34, it says, Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. I just love the first adjective that God uses here to describe himself to Moses. He first declares his name, who he is, the Lord, the Lord. And then the next descriptive word that he gives, it isn't mighty or all-powerful or sovereign or all-knowing. He is all of those things. But in this particular moment with Moses, in response to Moses' request of the Lord, that the Lord show Moses his glory. The first descriptive word that the Lord uses here with Moses as he tells Moses who he is, is compassionate. Our God is compassionate. Isaiah 55 is another beautiful window into the heart of compassion of our God. This contains some familiar verses, but I want us to prayerfully consider today viewing these verses in perhaps a different way. Isaiah 55, we see and hear the Lord and his sweet invitation to his people and in the language and in the repetition that the Lord uses of the word come, come, come, just this sweet plea of compassion to his people to turn from sin and to come back to him. Isaiah 55 verse 1 says, 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. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest affair. 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. See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you will hasten to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. 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. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts we often think of verses eight and nine in the context of the otherness of God's ways or the mysteriousness of the ways that he works that we just often don't understand and can't comprehend. And it just does not make sense to our limited knowledge and ability to grasp. And certainly those verses can speak to that. But I just wonder today if we could prayerfully consider that these verses also encourage us to be in complete all of the heart of compassion of our God. He is pleading with his people to come back to him. They are in sin and rebelling against God and his heart is spring-loaded with compassion for his people. That is what his gut reaction is, if you will, here in Isaiah 55. So maybe the statement that my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways, the Lord responds differently than we do. When my children are monkeying all through the house and they come running through the kitchen as I'm fixing dinner and holding a plate full of food, what naturally comes out in that moment is probably not going to be compassion. our god is not like us he doesn't respond the way that we often do he is spring-loaded with compassion in verse 7 there's a very clear call to forsake sin to turn and to come back to god and there is a promise that what awaits the repentance center is a merciful god compassion is what naturally flows from the heart of god when i sin and i stray from the lord he kindly and gently woos me back to him he is spring-loaded with compassion and i just love that window into the heart of god maybe your circumstances on this monday as you look at the upcoming week maybe your circumstances don't seem to reflect a god that is full of compassion but i just encourage you and i encourage my own heart to not rely on our perspective of what's happening around us not to rely on what i view as what the situations around me might seem to be truth, but that is not truth. The truth is who God says he is in his word. My circumstances and situations might be really hard. I might be overwhelmed with sadness or just heavy-hearted for a loved one or a friend, but my God is who he says that he is in his word. So I hope that encourages you on this Monday I hope that whatever you face this week that instead of looking out at the situation and trusting what what you're able to see in front of you that instead you'll remember and anchor your heart in the truth of who God says he is in his word he is the Lord the Lord the compassionate and gracious God who is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love I'll see you next week.

Originally published at warren.church.