Isaiah 48:10-12 - I have refined you

48:10,11

So God has refined the people, He has worked to sift out the evil in their hearts, just as He works to sift out the evil in our hearts. And He uses affliction to sort us out. Sadly, if often takes affliction to make us see sense, or to come to our senses. He does this for His own sake. Now some may see this as God being conceited or self-centred. It isn’t, and it is actually good news.  For it means that the essential nature of God is not to destroy us, but to work to restore us.

48:12

God continues to speak to Israel, and He starts by reminding them that He has called them. The same applies to us, if we want to understand ourselves we need to start from the fact that God has called us (John 15:16), this is the sovereignty of God. Now some get all worried that this means we don’t have anything to do with it. Well the Bible doesn’t get worried about this, it is quite clear from the Old Testament that what Israel did or did not do is of great importance, and it is quite clear from the New Testament that what we do with our lives matters. Proverbs says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Our worldview, our “self view”, our lives, need to be based above all else on God. He is the source of all things, the foundation of all things.