ALWAYS READY
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. (Isaiah 43:2 NLT)
Are you ready? God said this in prayer and I really did not know what He was referring to. Our normal response to someone who asks if we are ready is the question, “ready for what?” It is sort of like when someone asks if we will do them a favor. We would like to know what we are saying yes to. Or when someone starts a conversation with, “promise you won’t tell anyone,” we would like to know what we are promising about.
There is a difference in how we deal with people and how we deal with God. If we know God, we know we can trust Him. He would not ask for a favor that did not benefit us. He would not ask us to promise anything that is not in our best interest. That is just the way God is.
The first thing I did when God asked was take inventory in my mind about what I was supposed to be ready for. Did we talk about something and I forgot what it was? Yes, there are things that He speaks to me that I apparently store on my cloud memory and I am happy to trust Him to bring them back up.
As I considered the question, I understood that in Christ, we are always ready, because He is always ready. He always has a way in the making. He always has whatever the situation requires. Jesus is ready and so we are ready in Him. Remember, when Jesus said that He did only what His Father told Him. What He said, He heard from His father and He did what the Father showed Him to do. He was so confident of that, that He could say He always pleased His Father.
We are told in scripture to always be prepared to defend the hope that is within us. Our hope is in Christ. He promised that we could do all things in Him, so we really are always ready. It is like, we can do this thing; we just don’t know it yet.
If we have waited on the Lord, we are ready. If we have worshipped, praised, and put our trust in the Lord, we are ready. Isaiah tells us that deep waters are not problem for God. He is with us and He will keep us. Rivers of difficulty are a wading pool with God. The fires of oppression, which covers many things, cannot burn us. We are ready. It may warm up, but we can be sure we will not be consumed.
Blessed are they who put their trust in the Lord. We have mercy surrounding us. The answer to the question is “yes we are ready.” We do not need to hesitate. We can quickly declare that we are ready for anything and everything because we trust the Lord. Jesus was born to pave the way.