Kingdom Keys - Isaiah Series

So maybe you’ve heard it said, ‘read your bible’ so you tried and failed. Our hope as leaders is that all of us will pick up God’s word and come to understand the true nature of God. After all, the bible is God’s Word curated over centuries detailing His nature, His will, the meaning of life and humanity’s historical interactions with Him. The Bible details the hidden keys to the Kingdom. Hence, the reason we are reviewing a new book each week.

This week we move into The Book of Isaiah. A book of 66 chapters that make you wonder where we are in God’s time continuum. Because It sure seems like history is repeating itself. Stories of wars and rumors of wars. People being carted off to be re-educated and children being put up for adoption by the state. The book was written 2700 years ago: 700 years before Jesus and 2000 since our Savior walked the earth, died and rose for the forgiveness of sins. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like much has changed since then.

It reminds me of a story from Professor John Powell from Loyola University, Chicago.

I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day he first saw Tommy. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.

It was the first time he'd ever seen a boy with hair that long. He guessed it was just coming into fashion then. He knew in his mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s in it that counts; but on that day. He was unprepared and my emotions flipped. He immediately filed Tommy under “S” for strange… Very strange.

Tommy turned out to be the “atheist in residence” in the Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. They lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although John had to admit Tommy was a serious pain in the back pew.

When Tommy came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, “Do you think I’ll ever find God?” John decided instantly on a little shock therapy. “No!” he said very emphatically.

“Why not,” Tommy responded, “I thought that was the product you were pushing.”

John let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, “Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!” He shrugged a little and left my class and John’s life.

John felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line – “He will find you!” At least John thought it was clever. Later he heard that Tommy had graduated, and he was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. John heard that Tommy had terminal cancer.

Before John could search him out, Tommy came to see him. When he walked into John’s office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time.

“Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often; I hear you are sick,”

He blurted out: “Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks.”

“Can you talk about it, Tom?” John asked.

“Sure, what would you like to know?” Tommy replied.

“What’s it like to be only twenty-four and dying?

“Well, it could be worse. “Like what?”

“Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life.”

John began to look through my mental file cabinet under “S” where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody John tried to reject by classification, God sent back into his life to educate him,.)

“But what I really came to see you about,” Tom said, “is something you said to me on the last day of class.” (He remembered!) He continued, “I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But He will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was not intense at that time. (John’s clever line. He thought about that a lot!)

“But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that’s when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven.