What God wants is to “revive” the spirit of the crushed and the devastated. What he wants is to breathe fresh life into you. And Isaiah 57:15 is not exaggerating. Its hopeful message is not even exceptional. This verse is vintage Bible truth.

Where to Find God

When our lives fall apart, and we really need help, and we wonder if we can even keep going, where can we find God?

The Bible says that God dwells in two opposite places at once—way up high in his holy place above, where we can’t go, and way down low among the lowly and contrite, where we can go. But it can be hard to find God in the mushy middle.

That world of privilege and advantage, where money has the power to keep trouble out and pleasure in, where we can be “successful” without God—that false heaven is a comfortable trap. It trivializes Jesus as a lifestyle enhancement. He is not high and lifted up, not eternal and holy. He just doesn’t count for that much.

Isaiah 57:15 changes how we perceive him, which also changes where we want to live.

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,

      who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place,

      and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly,

      and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Wherever he is—that’s where we’ll find all that we truly need. Our Lord must be easy to find way up there in his heavenly glory. The angels are awestruck by him 24/7! Our Lord is also easy to find way down low at our rock bottom. So many saints can attest to that! But that middle space of worldly desires, with traffic jams of U-Hauls crowding in to move there every day—you and I see it differently now, don’t we?

Now that it’s God we want, rock bottom can start looking like the garden of Eden.

King David understood. He tells of when his very life was hanging by a thread:

I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. (Ps. 3:4)

Let’s not miss the surprising geography—both literal and metaphorical—in that verse.

Psalm 3:4 pictures God atop holy Mount Zion, 2,500 feet above sea level. As he prays this psalm, David is in the Jordanian Rift, nearly 2,500 feet below sea level—literally the lowest point on earth. . . . The language is intended to draw attention both to the depths of David’s plight and to the transcendent God who rules over all.1

Apparently, our Savior loves these extremes—up high, down low. It must mean that he is not too glorious to bother with us down here; he is too glorious not to care about us.

Sadly, not every place that passes as “Christian” will help us. Some might break our hearts even more deeply. But putting all our hope in the real Jesus, we take our stand here. “If your religion doesn’t help you, it is no religion for you; you had better be without it.”2 Therefore, we gladly descend to God’s dwelling place, where he brings real help for real sufferers.

Isaiah 57:15 is good news, isn’t it?

Read More