What God Wants and Doesn't Want: Isaiah 66

Isaiah is one of the most dense and thought-provoking books in the entire Bible. In this post, I discuss the very last chapter of Isaiah. I encourage you to read it in full.

But I particularly enjoy the first few verses of Isaiah 66, because it summarizes, in concise fashion, exactly what God wants and doesn't want from us.

First, what God wants, from verse 2 (ESV),

This is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.

And then, what God doesn't want, from verse 4 (ESV),

When I called, no one answered,
when I spoke, they did not listen; 
but they did what was evil in my eyes
and chose that in which I did not delight.

Simply put, God desires a "humble and contrite" heart. And when he speaks to us, we must listen and adjust our lives accordingly. How does he speak to us? One way is through the scriptures. That is, those verses are written to us! God is telling us, in verse 4, to live in his spirit, not in pursuit of earthly pleasures and treasures.

So as your prayer (without ceasing!) today, keep these powerful verses in mind.