Finally on Isaiah! I've been waiting to get to this book because I know how much there's going on in it. Reading psalms, proverbs, song of solomons was great and all but I need to get back to some old testament stories.
Something we all think about, something that a lot of people struggle with these days is vision, purpose and ultimately our calling from God. As Christians, we all want to know how we can serve God with our lives and sometimes it drives us crazy when we don't feel that this is revealed to us. I think this is ok initially, after all, what is more important than our calling through Christ? Sooner or later though, we must turn our attention away from ourselves and onto God. In Chapter 6 of Isaiah, God shows us how we can get our calling.
King Uzziah, a good king has just died, and Isaiah is worrying about the future of his country when God reveals Himself to him in a vision, "seated on a throne, high and exalted." At the sight of this, Isaiah immediately cries out, "Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips." An angel then comes down, touches his mouth with a live coal and says, "your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." Then the famous verse comes when God asks, "Whom shall I send?" and Isaiah owns up to the call saying "Here am I. Send me!"
Pastor Jae has preached on this passage a few times and it's awesome. Our calling comes through 3 simple steps. First, God reveals Himself to us. Then, we see who we are, and finally God heals us and gives us our calling. Isaiah sees God in his vision, immediately realizes he's a sinner, an angel of God heals him, and finally God anoints him as one of the most influential prophets of the old testament.
Another example that shows this exact sequence is found in Luke chapter 5. Peter, as a professional fisherman, had been fishing all night and didn't catch a thing. Jesus comes along, tells him to toss his nets a different direction and Peter ends up catching so many fish that his nets started to break. Peter kneels down and says, "Go away from me, LORD, I am a sinful man." Then Jesus says to Peter, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." Peter sees who God is first, sees himself as a sinner, and then Jesus gives him calling, just as he did for Isaiah.
It's amazing that everything we do, still needs to be about God. For us to know OUR calling, we must know GOD first. I think a lot of us, including myself, have directed this attention to ourselves first. We ask God what we can do, instead of asking what HE wants us to do. We still have our own selfish agendas and convince ourselves that God wants to use us in the areas that we want to be used instead of being open to His will first. When will we learn that even our own calling is really dependent on God?
I have been trying to be open to this area of my life more and my trip to Cali to see Dr. Kim reinforced what I thought God had been revealing to me lately. Dr. Kim repeatedly told me to serve the church wholeheartedly to start, quoting Ephesians 5:25 also which states, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." I am gaining more and more faith that future visions and purpose will be revealed to me while I am serving the church. I pray that I may just continue to seek after Him and know Him first and trust that all else will be given to me.
