Send me?

I’ve never met God the way Isaiah did in this Scripture. I’ve always known Him as the tender One, the humble One, the forgiving One. Here He’s on His powerful throne with the beautiful, majestic train of His robe filling the Temple with the Throne room shaking and smoke filling the room. But we find out He’s the same tender, humble, forgiving One that listens to me pray and who lives in my heart and who lived on earth 2000 years ago.

Isaiah 6:1-6, I won’t write all the verses here but a couple especially spoke to me. v. 5 – “Then said I (Isaiah) Woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Now, there were angels there and when they spoke, the Lord’s throne room shook and became smoke filled. That would have scared me into confessing my sins! But that’s not what shook Isaiah into reality. It was the sight of the “King, the Lord of Hosts.” Holy God shone and revealed the darkness of Isaiah and his people’s sin…an unclean mouth. So Isaiah confessed it.

Then an angel brought a coal from the altar and touched his lips. Isaiah became clean. Isaiah 6:6 “And Isaiah heard the voice Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I. Send me.”

When I sin and the Lord uses someone else to speak to me about it, it isn’t so much hurtful as it is warm and cleansing. It feels sometimes as though God places His finger on my heart and tenderly removes the part of me that sinned. Maybe this is what Isaiah felt. Because God immediately asked him “Who will go for Us” (the Trinity) And Isaiah said “Send me.”

I’m not as brave as Isaiah. When God asks “Who will go?” I say “Send me?” because I know my weaknesses and failures and sins. And sometimes it seems that God can’t use me. But that’s not true. That in fact is a lie! The Lord will use me until the day I go to be with Him as long as I am willing.

In the move “A Beautiful Mind” the gentleman, John Nash, with schizophrenia is recovering. He and his wife decide he should go back to the ivy league college he had attended and ask if he could just sort of be there in his old environment. So he asked the head of the Math department, Martin if he could stay in the library during the day. Martin said of course (they had been close friends in school.) So the next day John went to the library and they had no pass for him. They were rude with him and he got very upset and started talking out loud and angrily to the voices in his head. He went home and he said to his wife, “Maybe I should go back to the hospital” She said “Why don’t you try again tomorrow.”

That’s like our God. “You’re forgiven. Why don’t you try again tomorrow.”

2 comments November 13, 2010