Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. – Isaiah 59:1-2 (NIV)
It happened. Out of my pocket and into the toilet it fell. My cell phone made a huge splash in the forbidden place – the depths of the porcelain bowl. And without one thought, I reached directly into the waters of the commode to retrieve the cherished item, my supposed lifeline to humanity. My arm lunged to rescue my phone from the toilet as quickly as I would act in any true emergency. I even let out a scream when I saw the shiny, metallic blue piece of technology hit the water and roll over. So distraught was I, and I don’t even have a touch screen phone!
As soon as I had pulled the phone from the toilet, I ran to my blow-dryer and began my feeble attempt to save my phone from death. Carefully extracting tiny screws, I dried the inner parts and surfaces; but I did so to no avail. My cell phone recovered only slightly and remained inoperable.
After replacing the phone the next day at the store, I quietly asked myself, “Why all the fuss?” I knew the answer. Cell phones have become a critical part of communication. How would I stay in touch with “my people”? What about calls and the esteemed texts? Without my cell phone, I would feel cut off from society as we have come to know it.
Then my mind went to a chapter of the Bible on which I had preached many years before, Isaiah 59. My seemingly desperate experience with the submerged phone directed me to ponder a truly desperate situation – that in which we cannot communicate rightly with God. The prophet proclaims in Isaiah 59:1-2 (NIV), “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (emphasis mine). Just as the commode water stole from me a source of my communication with family and friends, so does my sin swipe my intimacy with my God.
I was instantly convicted of a great truth: I should be immeasurably more horrified by my heart’s plunge into sin than my cell phone’s nose-dive into the toilet! A submerged phone is a temporary glitch in one of the flows of human communication, but my heart’s sinfulness breaks my honest talking with God Almighty. My sin stops God from answering my prayer. Though His ear is not “too dull to hear,” my iniquity causes Him to refuse to hear. While stained with guilt, there remains a block between me and my Lord.
The question, then, becomes, “How quickly do I jump to remove myself from the waters of sinfulness?” I wonder if we are more outraged at the flood of wrong we have fallen into than the plunging of a piece of sensitive technology into water. How apt am I to quickly repent? Does my sin against God cause my spirit to shriek with disgust? Do I genuinely fear lost communication with God? How much does a block in my fellowship with Him bother me? Rightly, God’s refusal to hear us while we willfully sin against Him should spur us to resolve the matter. Much more than I need humans to hear me, I need God to intervene on my behalf.
Have you lately felt a terrible distance between you and God? Do you go through the motions of prayer, but God is not answering? Perhaps we must heed the warning that “[Our] sins have hidden his face from [us]” (Isaiah 59:2, NIV). And in observing this warning we will find a solution much better than vainly blow-drying a thoroughly soaked cell phone. Yes, the heart can be dried of sin by God Himself. When our Lord sees us lying there in the mess of sin, He decides to wash us when we simply and honestly repent. Isaiah 59:16 (NIV) declares, “[God] saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him.” God knows we are hopeless when it comes to “drying” ourselves of sin. So He takes matters into His own hands. By His own sacrifice and His own blood He saves us! Jesus is God in the flesh, having appeared to “work salvation” for us. All we need do is repent. “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins” (Isaiah 59:20, NIV, emphasis mine).
Do you see your fellowship with God submerged in the waters of your sin? What is it in your life that is displeasing Him? React quickly. Tell Him you want to be right and do right. Tell Him you want communication to flow once again. He will then listen, for “His ear is [not] to dull to hear” (Isaiah 59:1, NIV). Get that divine cell phone out of the depths; talk to God again!