Are you Standing in God's Way?

Isaiah 59:1-2 "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that he will not hear."

I find great comfort in verse one of Isaiah 59, and great conviction in verse two.  The Lord is truly a gracious and merciful God.  He always has His hand ready to reach out and save us.  He always has a listening ear to hear us.  I am reminded of the great event in scripture where Jesus comes to His disciples walking on water.  Peter questioned if it was truly the Lord and asked if He was in fact the Lord, and if he too could walk on the water out to Him.  The Lord granted his request and Peter began walking on water.  After walking for a short while, Peter began to notice the waves crashing around him and he began to sink into the sea.  It was then, that Peter cried out saying, "Lord save me!" And Jesus stretched His hand out and walked Peter back to the boat.

What a wonderful picture we have of the Lord reaching out His hand to save.  Now the part that troubles me here in our passage this morning is verse 2 and that little bitty word - "BUT".  While the Lord's hand isn't shortened, and His ear is always listening there is still that, "but" in verse 2.  God wants to save us, He wants us to call unto Him.  BUT, there is something that is standing in the way of Him doing what He wants, and that something is not a something as much as it is a someone - it is US.  We stand in the way of God reaching out His hand. Even though God knows exactly where we are at, at all times, He still lets us hide ourselves from Him. The reason God will not hear us is because we are not calling unto Him.  We may be crying, but it isn't unto Him, it is out of our sinful self-centeredness.   If God is going to hear us, and reach out His hand to us, we must repent to Him and long for that fellowship and companionship to be restored to us.  It is our own bullheadedness and lack of repentance that causes the separation from God.  Verse 4 gives even more insight by saying, "None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity."

God is standing there waiting with open arms, longing for us to cry out to Him.  Don't let your own foolish pride stand in way of you experiencing the wonderfulness of God's outstretched hand. As long as you hold on to the sin your life, whether it's lust, bitterness, anger, greed, gossipping, fornication, or pride, you will never know how good God truly is.  Let it go, stop trusting in your own vanity, and trust God.  Cry out to Him as Peter did saying, "Lord save me".