This week on my podcast (click here to check it out) I spent some time in Isaiah 55. I love this passage because it presents a beautiful invitation from the Lord, in His own voice:
Eternal One: If you are thirsty, come here; come, there’s water for all.
Whoever is poor and penniless can still come and buy the food I sell.
There’s no cost—here, have some food, hearty and delicious, and beverages, pure and good.
I don’t understand why you spend your money for things that don’t nourish or work so hard for what leaves you empty.
Attend to Me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest, most delectable of things.
Listen closely, and come even closer. My words will give life, for I will make a covenant with you that cannot be broken, a promise of My enduring presence and support like I gave to David.
Isaiah 55:1-3, the Voice Bible
We are invited, in our poverty and thirst, to come and enjoy His provision and His presence. We aren’t required to be worthy or bring anything…. just ourselves. We are invited to receive and to hear from Him. Read those verses again. The invitation is so beautiful.
Now, consider this question. When the Lord beckons to you to come and enter into His care, how do you approach?
Perhaps you head right in, as a child who’s come home breezes through the front door with excitement and confidence.
Or maybe you hesitate, as though you’re a servant who must cautiously enter in through the back entrance.
Which best describes you? Take a moment to talk to the Lord about this. Press in to get a sense of His response to you.
Tell me about it in the comments below if you feel comfortable!
Without a doubt, God wants you to come boldly through the front door of His presence and approach knowing how much you are wanted and loved. Though we do serve Him, we are first and foremost His children, loved and cherished. No more entering through the servant’s entrance and hovering in the shadows to gather courage for an approach.
A visit to the eye doctor this week reminded me of the importance of looking through the correct lens. Even the smallest adjustment can affect how we see the world! Far-off road signs and the fine print might not be accessible without finely tuned lenses.
Perhaps something we rarely consider is the lens through which we see God and His Word. Whether we know it or not, our life experiences and core beliefs about ourselves have a considerable effect on how we interpret the Bible. If we look at the scriptures through a lens of fear, shame, self-condemnation, rejection, perfectionism, abandonment, or feeling responsible for everyone, that lens will affect how we read, understand, and apply the spiritual principles there.
For so many years I viewed this passage in Galatians through the lens of shame and perfectionism:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-25
My version would have read something like, “Be loving, joyful, peaceful, etc. or you are not a real Christian. Crucify your flesh and stop sinning or you won’t be good enough for God or anyone else. Show the Holy Spirit that you can be like Him.”
Can you see how the lens of perfectionism and shame didn’t allow the full truth to come through? Once God started removing layers of these lenses, I saw that the Galatians passage highlights the Spirit of God as the SOURCE of the qualities I was trying to perform on my own. The power to crucify the flesh belongs to the Spirit, who leads the transformation of our hearts and minds as we keep in step. We are not in charge of our own spiritual transformation. It is our job to yield and participate in what God is doing in us.
Sadly, at one point in my life, it just became too painful to read the Bible. It felt like one shame storm after another as I found countless ways I had fallen short and endless expectations to be something I wasn’t. I actually had to take a break from reading for a while because it wasn’t good for my mental health.
Once I began to ease back in, I kept to the Psalms because they are so full of the emotions I was feeling at the time. Then I moved to the Gospels to see Jesus in action. God challenged me to look through the lens of love and grace. What does this passage say about God’s love? What affection is He showing me right now? How is His grace evident here? It was like reading the Bible for the first time!
I learned another new approach to the Bible when the Lord whispered to my heart that He wanted to read a passage to me. He changed some of the pronouns and the point of view so that the message was coming straight from Him to me. This has been such a powerful practice for me that I started a new podcast doing this very thing! If you’re intrigued by this idea, you can try the first 8-minute episode of “Pressing In with Jamie De Silvia” on all the major podcast platforms.
Some might think that I am watering down the Word of God. However, I am trying to remove the lenses that are keeping us from really seeing and understanding the Word. There is a mountain of truth to be discovered in the Bible. Some of it is hard truth, spoken explicitly! I’m not trying to remove the truth, but merely the added dysfunction that affects what we hear and read.
Recently, I was reading in the book of John in the Passion Translation and this jumped out at me:
Moses gave an intimidating set of standards, but Jesus is unveiling truth wrapped in mercy. He has some hard things to say, but He does it in a loving way. Keep that mercy in mind as you read His words.
Friend, do you have any filters that might be affecting the way you see God or understand His Word? If you’re not sure, ask the Holy Spirit to show you. A word or two might pop into your mind.
Lean into these words and talk to God about them.
It is not your job to remove the filters. God will remove them one layer at a time with His healing hands. Lean into His loving transformation. You can trust Him.
Sometimes when shame infiltrates our core at a very young age, it can become a guiding force in our lives. Even though we know we’re saved, cleansed from sin and forgiven, we can still find ourselves operating out of that core of shame. It can lead to perfectionist tendencies, an inability to say no to others, a desire to hide our hearts from others, self-sabotage, and even addictive behaviors. We are either making decisions out of shame, or we are looking for ways to escape and numb the shame. Read more »
