This is what the Lord says—
    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God,
    who teaches you what is best for you,
    who directs you in the way you should go.
18 If only you had paid attention to my commands,
    your peace would have been like a river,
    your well-being like the waves of the sea.
19 Your descendants would have been like the sand,
    your children like its numberless grains;
their name would never be blotted out
    nor destroyed from before me.”

There is an ”If only” lament in this passage. So much is dependant upon listening to God and responding positively to His Word. See how much blessing we forfeit if we fail to pay attention.

I love this quote from Dallas Willard, and I long for it to be true of my own experience, don’t you?

”Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.”

Barry Webb writes about ”…the serious nature of failure to listen to God; it shuts us out from the peace of God. As in chapters 40-55 in general, Isaiah has been speaking here of a situation that was to emerge after his own lifetime. As far as the basic sins and failures he describes are concerned, however, he may just as well have been looking about him, or even speaking directly to the church in our own day and age. We need no great imagination to recognise ourselves in his stinging rebukes. Sadly, the sins of the people of God do not alter.” (Isaiah, p.192)