Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

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

Psalm 105:1-2
Give thanks to the LORD and proclaim his greatness. Let the whole world know what he has done. Sing to him; yes, sing his praises. Tell everyone about his wonderful deeds.
In this beautiful psalm, the writer rooted his praise in how God had acted in history. He looked back to how God had led Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and finally Moses. Through the years, God had been consistently faithful to His people, and they had every reason to rejoice. The psalm was written for a very specific moment in Israel’s history when David brought the ark to the place of meeting in Jerusalem. In 1 Chronicles 16:7, we are told that David gave Asaph and his fellow Levites this psalm as a song of thanksgiving to the Lord. It wasn’t a general song of worship but one which specifically charted how God had been at work among His people.
We need to remember our history. A birthday is a brilliant moment for looking back, and every church would be wise to have a specific annual moment to reflect on its history. It’s very easy to forget the story of faith of a church community unless it is regularly repeated. We need to listen to the people who were part of the church ten, 20, 30, 40 or more years ago. Almost certainly, there will have been times of encouragement and despair, success and failure, growth and decline, but through it all God has been faithful and we need to celebrate together. If your church has only been planted in the last few years, listen to the stories of faith from those who founded the church and the ways in which God led them.
Our remembering should never be a selfish activity to make us feel good about life, but should always lead us to action. As we recall the history of what God has done, we are challenged to go forward with the mission on which He has sent us. That will always involve proclamation. We will want to proclaim God’s faithfulness within our churches in order to encourage one another, and then to everyone else we meet in order to help them to see how great God is.
Question
In what ways does your own church celebrate the history of what God has done?
Prayer
Loving God, I praise You for your faithfulness. Help me never to forget the amazing things that You have done. Amen

Psalm 104:24-25
O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Here is the ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small.
Many of the psalmists use the wonder of creation as a springboard for their worship. This particular psalm does so by reminding us of the six days of creation. The poetic language is beautiful. Take, for example, day one, when God made light. He writes: “You are dressed in a robe of light. You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens; you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot; you ride upon the wings of the wind. The winds are your messengers; flames of fire are your servants” (Psalm 104:2-4). As he looks through the days of creation, it becomes clear that God didn’t create the world and then disappear but continues to be actively involved.
It is good for us to spend time reflecting on creation because as we do so, we are bound to gasp in wonder. Sir Isaac Newton, the famous scientist, said: “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.” Our bodies are thought to be made up of about 100 trillion cells. We all have about 100 billion neurons, which fire off between five and 50 messages each second. I could go on, but however you happen to be feeling today, let me assure you that you are simply amazing. If you look at a flower, you will need to gasp some more. The intricate detail of each petal and leaf is amazing, to say nothing of the miracle of growth. Wherever you look, creation screams at us that God is a great God and worthy of all our praise.
Many of us were taught from an early age to pray with our eyes shut to save us from distractions, but I would strongly encourage you to pray with your eyes open from time to time. Look at the people around you and the world that God has made and give thanks to him for the wonder of His creation. As we do so, let us gasp in wonder. Thomas Carlyle said that “wonder is the basis of worship”, and I think he was right.
Question
When did you last gasp at creation and why?
Pray
Creator God, I worship You. Forgive me for those times when I have taken Your amazing world for granted. Teach me afresh how to enjoy the wonder of Your creation. Amen