LifeLink Devotions for Thursday, August 14, 2025

Isaiah 36:7 And if you say to me, “We are depending on the LORD our God”—isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship before this altar”?

To fully understand the context and the application of today’s devotional, you should read the entire thirty-sixth chapter of Isaiah. Here’s a quick summary.

King Hezekiah is reigning in Judah. The king of Assyria, Sennacherib, has invaded the land and is attacking all the fortified cities. Sennacherib sends his commander with a large army over to Jerusalem. Hezekiah sends a delegation to meet them. The Assyrian commander makes these statements:

• Why are you so confident?
• You claim to have strength, but we see no evidence of it.
• You say you have allies, but they are weak and powerless against us.
• You claim to trust in your God, but you have stopped worshiping Him and have adopted other gods.

It’s this last statement that hits me really hard. Here was the enemy of God, with no faith in the One True God at all, who is attacking God’s chosen people, and they notice a problem of hypocrisy. God’s covenant people have ignored the covenant and rejected their faith in God alone. For the sake of pleasing the people they live with – wives, children, and friends – they have removed what they thought was an obstacle to survival in the world – their faith in Jehovah God. They believed that they would fit into their culture better if they eliminated the one thing that made all other people angry.

David Wilkerson once preached on the subject of anguish and said, “What anguish it must bring to the heart of God when He sees that the Bride He was preparing for marriage to His Son has instead been married to the world.”

It is a sad day when the Bride of Christ has forgotten the upcoming marriage feast and chosen to be married to the world.

My friends, as followers of Christ, why are we so easily persuaded to make friends with the world and adopt its standards? Why do we continue to see our faith in Jesus Christ as an obstacle to acceptance with the world rather than a means of bringing true life to the world? Why have we chosen to become adulterous in our spiritual lives and have a fling with the world? It is time for us to be recognized by our faith and not our positions or our possessions. It is time for us to find pleasure in doing the Lord’s work rather than finding more ways to find pleasure from the world.

Renounce your relationship with the world today, and prepare your heart, soul, mind, and body to be married to Jesus.

Pastor John