Beauty For Ashes
Hello Everyone! Here is an excerpt that has great comfort and wisdom for anyone who has experienced heart ache or heart break. This excerpt is from my father Dick Mills’ book “The Spirit Filled Believer’s Daily Devotional.”
Isaiah 61:3 “To give them beauty for ashes….
“Ashes are the only thing left when dreams go up in smoke.
A young woman enters marriage full of high hope and a wonderful dream. The marriage sours, the hope is shattered, the dream is gone; she is left looking at a pile of ashes.
A young man goes into business with aspirations of greatness. Errors in judgment, changing tides, wrong decisions and he goes bankrupt. Ashes.
Good health, good friendships, good plans for the future can all go up in flames overnight leaving nothing but the blackened ashes of disappointment, disillusionment, and despair.
This observation may seem gloomy and depressing, but it does’t have to be. There is an answer. Only the Lord can turn ashes into a thing of beauty.
He can take any broken situation mend it, and make it into an object of art, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.
If you are “burned out,” don’t wallow in the ashes of self-pity. Let the Lord take over your life from here on. See what He will do with it. His creativity will surprise you!
Faced with ashes, we humans tend to finalize by concluding; “Well that is it, it’s all over. There’s nothing left.”
But there is something-
God has a plan-
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In this verse, the Lord steps in and literally makes something out of nothing.
He has the ability to take our worst losses and turn them into powerful displays of divine beauty.”
Isaiah 61:1-3 ““The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
Father in Jesus Name, we pray together and agree for your words to come to pass in our lives. We praise you because you are worthy of our praise. We honor and glorify you because you are Holy and worthy of honor. Your name is Hallowed. Your word is forever settled in heaven. And it is because of your word and what it says, that we praise you and exchange our heaviness, our sorrow, our grieving with Praise. The garment of praise. We deliberately put it on. We use our mouth, our words, our voices to praise you.
Lord we ask for your spirit to come, your presence to come. Lord we ask you to heal and do something in our hearts that only you can do. Nothing is wasted in your hands Lord.
We again give our hearts completely to you.
We love you.
We live for you.
We don’t ever walk away from you, quit believing in you, nor do we give up.
Our lives are in your hands. Again.
In your precious Name, the Name above every name, Jesus.
Amen.
Today, turn to the Lord. Everything that is weighing you down, surrender to Him.
Psalm 5:3, “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord;
In the morning I will direct it to You,
And I will look up.”
Philippians 4:6, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;”
Today is a good day to surrender every thought and weight over to Him with prayer-
With faith and expectation,
Deborah (Mills) Booth
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