God’s Refreshing Word By Dennis Fisher January 16, 2015

God’s Refreshing Word




Read: Isaiah 55:8-11
My word . . . shall not return to Me void. —Isaiah 55:11





When I was a boy, our family would occasionally travel across Nevada. We loved the desert thunderstorms. Accompanied by lightning bolts and claps of thunder, huge sheets of rain would blanket the hot sand as far as the eye could see. The cooling water refreshed the earth—and us.

Water produces marvelous changes in arid regions. For example, the pincushion cactus is completely dormant during the dry season. But after the first summer rains, cactuses burst into bloom, displaying delicate petals of pink, gold, and white.

Likewise, in the Holy Land after a rainstorm, dry ground can seemingly sprout vegetation overnight. Isaiah used rain’s renewal to illustrate God’s refreshing Word: “As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:10-11).

Scripture carries spiritual vitality. That’s why it doesn’t return void. Wherever it encounters an open heart, it brings refreshment, nourishment, and new life.
God’s Word is like refreshing rain
That waters crops and seed;
It brings new life to open hearts,
And meets us in our need. —Sper
The Bible is to a thirsty soul what water is to a barren land.



INSIGHT: We cannot know God unless He reveals Himself to us. An attribute of God is a characteristic that God has chosen to reveal about Himself through His Word. Incommunicable attributes are those that belong to God alone (e.g., omniscience [all-knowing]; omnipotence [all-powerful]; omnipresence [present everywhere]; immutability [unchangeable]; infinite [having no limits]; transcendence [beyond comprehension]).

Communicable attributes are those that human beings can also possess (e.g., compassion, love, mercy, goodness). In Isaiah 55:8-9, God reveals that He is unlike any other being and our finite minds can never fully understand Him (see Job 11:7-9; Ps. 131:1; Rom. 11:33). Throughout Scripture we are told that there is no one like God (see Ex. 15:11; Ps. 35:10; 89:6-8; Isa. 40:25).