God has provided a Savior
Always Peachy Devotions | God Has Provided: A Study of Isaiah (November 9-15, 2025)
Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. (Isaiah 11:1)
Winter is coming.
I’m sure those memes are starting to make their seasonal reappearance around this time, yeah? And it’s true. Winter is on the way. It will be here in a few more weeks, and until then we do the long cold countdown to the darkest day of the year.
Sometimes I feel like that’s a good picture of our world in many ways. Nothing works the way it’s supposed to. People don’t act the way we expect. Nobody does what is right, even those who say they will. We can’t even get people to agree on things that used to be simple, obvious truths. The world is dark and getting darker.
How is it possible to cling to hope when the world and everyone in it seems intent on throwing hope away?
Well, first off, as followers of Jesus, we are called to be Children of Light. We aren’t citizens of the dark. That’s not where we live, and that’s not where we should be doing life. So if that’s where you spend the majority of your time, the dark, maybe you should consider changing a few things in your life first.
This week, we’re going to be focusing on Isaiah 11:1-5. At first, I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough in those five verses for all week, but I was certainly wrong. This little passage is loaded with wisdom and important things about how to live with hope, especially when the world is hopeless. If you haven’t read the whole passage, now is a great time to check it out.
Last week, we talked briefly about the concept of the Branch, as a symbol of the promised Messiah. Well, this week we get to focus on a different side of that prophecy: the Stump. This concept of a stump is an extraordinary picture of hope. We will dig more deeply into that symbolism tomorrow, but for today I wanted to introduce our memory verse for the week as well as the entire passage we will be reading.
It won’t take you very long to realize that there is something special about this passage. Verses 1-through-5 of chapter 11 are talking about Jesus. This is a Messianic Prophecy hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was born, and it is highly specific. This is one of the verses we can use to identify Jesus, especially since it goes into detail about His character and how He would live.
And even though this passage is talking about Jesus, there’s a lot we can take from it that we can apply to our own lives. After all, Jesus is our example. He’s the One we are following. He is the One who we should be imitating. So since we know from this passage how He thinks and lives, this should give us some important details about how to make our own choices.
I’m excited for this week’s study. We will go much deeper into this passage, but for today, let’s just sum it all up by recognizing what the Stump and the Branch mean for us.
New life today and hope for the future: That’s what it means to follow Jesus.
Sounds great, right? It is. Let’s learn how to do it the best we can together.
Memory Verse:
