Know that whatever happens today, nothing can thwart the purposes of our Sovereign God. Read / Listen Listen to passage & devotional: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 26 Q. What do you believe when you say, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth”? A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father because of Christ his Son. I trust him so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world. He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father. Summary The story of God's covenant people in the Old Testament is one episode after another of their pagan neighbors threatening their security. While it's true that at times God enabled these nations to rise up against His sinful people in order to punish them, God would consistently answer the Israelites' prayers for salvation when they finally came around. This section of the book of Isaiah is full of God's promises for deliverance, containing oracles against powerful enemies like Babylon and Moab. This particular passage concerning God's promise to crush Assyria is one of the shortest passages in this section, but it's also one of the most pointed and significant. God, through His prophet Isaiah, reminds His people - Israel then, and us now - that whatsoever God plans and purposes will happen, because there is no created being powerful enough to thwart Him or turn back His outstretched hand (v24 & 27). Dig Deeper We refer to this doctrine of God's absolute dominance using several different terms, but among the most common are the words omnipotent, meaning all powerful, and sovereignty. Sometimes we refer to a king or other head of state as being a sovereign, meaning they have total control over their domain. Simply put, God always gets what He wants. Understanding the concept of God's sovereignty is essential to properly understand Christian theology. We see it in every major theme in the Bible: yesterday we saw that God powerfully spoke reality into being through His Son; God demonstrates His righteous authority by cursing Adam's sin; God's omnipotence is made clear by raising Christ from the dead; and the Bible ends with God sovereignly establishing a new heavens and earth. People tend to be skeptical of promises, because they are so easy to make but hard to keep. Know that you can absolutely trust the promises God has made to you, because passages like this one in Isaiah demonstrate that He not only has the desire to make good on the promises He made, but the omnipotent ability to follow through on them as well, just as He did for Israel time and time again. AAA Prayer (About) ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our powerful, omnipotent, sovereign God: no one can thwart Him; ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Thank God for reminders like today's passage that build up your trust in His sovereignty. ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - Acts 26

Read / Listen Listen to passage & devotional: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 106 Q. language to describe this ongoing process: you are to put to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 8:13 in your own life; ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - 2 John

Listen to passage & devotional: Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 14: The Creation and Fall of Man Here John calls men “darkness.” (Genesis 4:1, ESV). -19). Today: Matthew 10

As Jesus said in John 10:28, no one - not even Sarx, your nagging sinful nature, can snatch you out of

Listen to passage & devotional: Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 19: The Two Natures of Christ We believe that by being thus conceived the person of the Son has been inseparably united and joined together Today: Ephesians 1

A song. 1  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2  Therefore He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. 10  He says, But it is spread and dispersed throughout the entire world, though still joined and united in heart (v7 & 11). :18).

Isaiah 49:1-7 CONTEXT: This passage is one of four "Servant Songs" in the book of Isaiah that point forward But it is spread and dispersed throughout the entire world, though still joined and united in heart God "forms in the womb" (v1, 5), or as Psalm 139:13 puts it, God knits people together.

the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground (Genesis 1: Keep in mind the created order revealed in passages like Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, as you care for the King's Today: Mark 12

Baptism doesn't just join you to the Church, it joins you to Christ. When you were baptized, it was much more than a photo op: you were spiritually joined into Christ's death Those who've been joined to Christ's death have also been joined to His resurrection so that they may

(1:2) As we look across our world and even our own communities today, many of the complaints Habakkuk day, "the earth," the God promises, "will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD" (2:14 Habakkuk knows the LORD will "crush the leader of the land of wickedness" (3:13). Today: 1 Corinthians 4