“In repentance and rest you will be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength. But you were not willing.” Isaiah 30:15
The acrostic above [Keep It Simple Saints] is most appropriate for our everyday Christian living. Let us learn from history on this one.
Israel in Isaiah’s time complicated their lives with every sin you could imagine and then wanted to worship God on their terms. They even wanted Isaiah the prophet sent to them from God, to change his prophecies and messages in order to accommodate and feel good about their own plans and desires that were devoid of Yahweh! (Is. 30:10).
But the simple message from God who is ever gracious and compassionate (Is. 30:18) that would save them from literal disaster was as we see in the text above. Repentance and rest - quietness and trust!
Nothing changes! Today the message for God’s people is the same. It’s only through repentance (a change of mind that produces a change of behaviour) or, a turning from sin to rest in God’s promises of forgiveness, can we ever know true salvation. Salvation can be the moment we first trust in the Lord or it can be an ongoing salvation from a life of spiritual disaster (1Tim. 1:19).
It is only when we repent & rest in what God has promised can we know His salvation.
But what then? What should my life be characterized by as we move on?
Isaiah again declares the simplicity of a prosperous walk with God. He says “in quietness and trust is your strength..” In other words as Paul commanded in 1 Thessalonians 4:11 “….make it your ambition to lead a quiet life…” Its only as we quietly go about our daily business, trusting the Lord by obeying his commands, that we gain “strength”. “Strength” here is that of being strong in the Lord because our trust is in the eternal, sovereign, omnipotent God of the universe.
May it never be it said of us, like that of Israel - “But you were not willing.” K.I.S.S