Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Isaiah 46:4
I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.
I have huge respect for many people, but at the top of my list come carers. I am constantly amazed by the way in which so many people pour out their lives to support others. They give up their own convenience and opportunities in order to give people their love. It is impossible to know the exact number of carers, but in many countries it will be about ten per cent of the population – so I am absolutely sure that this describes many of you.
Today’s verse focuses attention on the supreme carer – God Himself. He is the pre-eminent carer because He never sleeps and there is no limit to His wisdom and strength. Amazingly, He is the carer for all of us. Whatever our needs, He is able to reach out to us and give us support, from the time when we are born to the time when we have white hair. The latter is now a fitting description of me, so I find this particularly powerful and encouraging.
There may be times in our lives when we are unaware that God is our carer, perhaps because we are overwhelmed with our busy lives and don’t have time to think about Him. God’s people living in exile in Babylon were often totally unaware of Him. They frequently felt that they had been forgotten about and that life was hopeless. Through it all, however, God was nearer to them than their breath. He stood beside them, offering to care for them in every moment.
Whether you are feeling happy and confident today or that the bottom has recently fallen out of your world, you need to remember that God cares for you and will not leave your side.
Question
In what way do you need God to be your supreme carer today?
Prayer
Thank You Lord that You are constantly nourishing and supporting me, even when I forget about You. Amen

Isaiah 44:8-9
You are my witnesses—is there any other God? No! There is no other Rock—not one! How foolish are those who manufacture idols. These prized objects are really worthless. The people who worship idols don’t know this, so they are all put to shame.
Isaiah has a great deal to say about idols. He laughs at the sheer stupidity of those who spent their time carving idols out of blocks of wood. Some of the wood would be used for burning in order to keep everyone warm and to bake bread or cook a meal, and another part of the wood was then carefully shaped into an idol to be worshipped. Could anything be more foolish? Isaiah reminds his hearers that they have one true God who is a Rock and who alone is worthy of worship. Worshipping anyone or anything else is a complete waste of time.
Our society is full of idols. They are not often carved out of wood, but they are just as real because an idol is anything that is put in the place that is rightfully God’s. A car, house, career, family, sport, hobby or anything at all can be an idol if it becomes the focus of our attention and if we give it priority in our lives. None of these things is bad in themselves, but when they force God out of His number one spot, they become idolatrous and destructive.
What matters above anything else is that we give God the first place in our lives and encourage others to do the same. We are witnesses to a God of love who longs to fill everyone with His life, so we need to warn other people that anyone or anything else will be a complete waste of their time.
Question
What seem to be the most attractive idols to the people that you know?
Prayer
God, You are my Rock. I worship You because You are worthy of my praise. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit as I put You first in my life and encourage others to do the same. Amen

Isaiah 43:19
I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
In recent years, I have talked to lots of churches about their vision. It’s really important for any organisation to be inspired by a clear and captivating vision for the future. It keeps us going when life is dull and hard work, and it keeps us heading together in a definite direction. However, time and again I have sensed that churches’ visions are for getting back to how things used to be. A church I once worked with had memories of the time when all 1,200 seats would be filled for the evening service. By the time I met them, they had shrunk to a small community of about 50 people at the Sunday services and they longed to put the clock back to the good old days. In many ways this is very understandable, but Isaiah tells us that God doesn’t want to take us backwards. His vision is for us to head on a new journey to a new place.
In this chapter, Isaiah speaks about the Exodus. This was a turning point in the life of the people of Israel. After 400 years in Egypt, during which they had lived as slaves, God had set them free by bringing them miraculously through the Red Sea on dry ground. They’d had a supreme experience of God’s salvation. In this passage, however, Isaiah tells them to forget about it. He doesn’t want them to dwell on the past. Wonderful as the Exodus was, God had no intention of doing a repeat performance. He wanted to lead them on an exciting new journey.
None of us can be certain what our future will look like – that is in God’s secure hands – but the one thing we can be absolutely sure about is that our future won’t be a repeat of the past.
Question
In what ways can you see God doing something new in your life?
Prayer
Loving God, help me to keep my eyes fixed on the new things that You are wanting to do in my life. Amen

Isaiah 43:2
When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
If you’ve got the impression that following God will give you the smoothest journey through life, you obviously haven’t read the Bible! From first to last in the Old Testament we discover that following God often involves suffering and rejection. In the New Testament, we meet Jesus, who despite being fully man and fully God saw suffering at its worst, even to the point of death on the cross. As He promised, His disciples were hated just as He had been, and most of them suffered terribly for their faith.
In our verse today, God says it how it is. He recognises honestly that His hearers would suffer in all sorts of ways. They would be confronted by deep and threatening waters and even have to face fire, but through it all God would be with them. The threats of life could never break their constant relationship with Him. Paul speaks very similarly in his letter to the Romans. In chapter 8, he concludes: “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
If you don’t know God as your own personal friend, I am sad to say that the future is full of threats and uncertainty. But if you do know God and walk in His ways, you can look to the future with peace and confidence because you know that whatever happens, your loving heavenly Father will be right there beside you.
Question
Are you looking to the future with peace and confidence?
Prayer
Loving Heavenly Father, I thank You that You promise to be with me whatever I face in the future. Amen

Psalm 106:6-7
Like our ancestors, we have sinned. We have done wrong! We have acted wickedly! Our ancestors in Egypt were not impressed by the LORD’s miraculous deeds. They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them. Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea.
I strongly recommend that you read through this psalm and the previous one because they are twins. In Psalm 105, we hear about all the amazing things that God did to guide and strengthen His people from the earliest days until their entry into the Promised Land. Now in Psalm 106, the psalmist takes another tour through the history of God’s people and concludes that, humanly speaking, it was a complete disaster. Just as God was consistently faithful and loving, His people were repeatedly faithless and disobedient. But the psalmist didn’t simply point the finger at people in the past. He recognised that his own generation was also guilty of disobeying God and forgetting to walk in His ways.
As we look back through human history, there is much that we can learn. Every page of history contains accounts of bad decisions and stupid failures and, if we are honest, we aren’t so very different. Our lives fall well short of perfection and we need to own up and find out how we can live them in a richer, fuller and more obedient way. The point of looking back is that we can learn. We don’t have to repeat the past. Instead, we can set off on a new journey inspired by its lessons.
The most consistent fault of God’s people in this psalm was the sin of forgetting. I’m sure that we will all own up to the sin of forgetting. A lot of the time, it doesn’t matter that much. We may forget someone’s name or whether they take milk in their tea. Such things are minor. Forgetting God is another matter. Time and again, we read that the people of Israel forgot how God had blessed them. They carried on with their lives as if God didn’t exist. We need to do everything we can to remember who God is and what He has done. We need to ensure that we maintain a rhythm of worship and prayer so that we can’t possibly forget our great God.
Question
What do you do to ensure that you don’t forget what God has done in your life?
Prayer
Loving God, thank You that You never forget me. Help me to make sure that I never forget You. Amen