Remember Your Lenten Fast? part 6 of 6.

Quick Review of this intermittent series, based on the early part of Isaiah 58, pretty much yields one response: YIKES! and other words and other stuff for which I don’t have any polite words.

So what? So as has been said in many ways by sharper, more profound, more advanced followers of Christ Jesus—

Too many of us, and you’ll notice that’s first person plural, get sidetracked thinking that worship is about us and our feelings. And the most important thing about them is that we feel the warm fuzzies of the Holy Spirit.

In Isaiah 58, God says that we’re doing these things for ourselves. God is neither fooled nor impressed.

There’s a paradox at work here. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it, Christ Jesus says in Matthew 16:5, but if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

Isaiah 58 brings up hypocrisy, inconsistency, and selfishness as standing between us and us and the best the God has for us.

— If I could assign homework, it’d be Isaiah 58.

In fact, that’s where I’m going now.

Meet me there.

Of far more importance: meet God there.