Here am I send me
Isa. {6:5} Then said I, Woe [is] me! for I am undone; because
I [am] a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King,
the LORD of hosts. {6:6} Then flew one of the seraphims
unto me, having a live coal in his hand, [which] he had
taken with the tongs from off the altar: {6:7} And he laid
[it] upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips;
and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. {6:8}
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I
send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here [am] I; send
me.
Aren't we all people with unclean lips?
Don't we all dwell with people of unclean lips?
Are any of us clean?
We desire to be the Lord's even as sin reigns in and around us.
We fight against the sin in ourselves striving to resist the devil so he'll flee from us.
We cling to Jesus and beg for His mercy, His grace.
We long to be made clean by our Lord and Savior.
Isaiah knew his unclean state, knew he was not fit to be the Lord's.
One of God's angels plucked a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah's lips with it.
Then the angel said-
'Lo, this hath touched thy lips- and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.'
The coal from the altar touched his lips.
Isaiah was lamenting the fact he was a man of unclean lips living among those with unclean lips.
He was a sinner among sinners.
His sin was taken away by the Lord's messenger with a live coal.
Purged, burned away, the unclean made cleaned.
We all need to be made clean, every one of us.
May the Lord's mercy rain down upon us. May our lips be touched by a live coal from God.
May we hear the call of the Lord and reply-- Here we are Lord, send us.
Only by the grace and mercy of the Lord can we be saved, can we be made clean.
Lord, hear our prayer as we cry out to be made clean, to be used by you.
By the mercy and grace of Jesus.
**
A song based on this verse in Isaiah--
Kutless
Take me in
Take me past the outer courts
Into the Holy place
Past the brazen altar
Lord I want to see Your face
Pass me by the crowds of people
The priests who sing Your praise
I hunger and thirst for Your righteousness
But it's only found one place
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take me in by the blood of the Lamb
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take the coal, touch my lips, here I am
Take me past the outer courts
Into the Holy place
Past the brazen altar
Lord I want to see Your face
Pass me by the crowds of people
The priests who sing Your praise
I hunger and thirst for Your righteousness
But it's only found one place
Take me past the outer courts
Into the Holy place
Past the brazen altar
Lord I want to see Your face
Pass me by the crowds of people
The priests who sing Your praise
I hunger and thirst for Your righteousness
But it's only found one place
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take me in by the blood of the Lamb
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take the coal, touch my lips, here I am
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take me in by the blood of the Lamb
Take me in to the Holy of Holies
Take the coal, touch my lips, here I am
Take the coal, touch my lips, here I am
***
2/27/10
'He makes, we are made.' The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ('He makes')
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ('we are made.')
'He is original, we are derivative.' The Problem of Pain- C.S. Lewis
derivative (Copied or adapted from others)
Gen 1:27 '...in the image of God created he him...' Adapted from another- adapted from God's image.
'But at the same time, and for the same reason, the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another.' The Problem of Pain- C.S. Lewis
Rom 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
Means to me:
The intimacy of Creator and creature will forever be more intimate than any intimacy between a creature and creature. No creature knows of themselves as the creator of the creature knows them. All creators know their creations so much more intimately than any other could. The process of the creation alone brings something no one can imitate. Another could take apart an original creation and know how to put it back together but it's not the same at all as the creator in making the creation, it can't be. So while we as creatures believe we know one another because we are a creature, we even say who better to understand than one of our own kind, but I say God better understands, the Creator better understands us than we can possibly imagine. As strange as it might seem, as often as we question God's judgment and ability to understand, as often as we rail against Him accusing Him of not being able to understand us, we are fools because the Creator understands us better than we can ever understand ourselves.
God is Spirit and He made us spirit bound by flesh. The flesh part of us we understand- the baser nature we mostly understand I should say. We can empathize with each others pleasures and pains if we've felt them ourselves even minutely. The spirit within us is God's connection to us. Our Creator created within us a part He alone can fully commune with. When we turn away from God we reject the spirit. When we turn to another creature hoping they can fill that spirit need in us, they fall far short...far, far short.
Forever, as C.S. Lewis writes- 'The intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another.' While we foolishly keep believing we will find a completeness in a relationship with another human being it will never attain the closeness we can attain in a relationship with God. We might think for a short period in time we have that perhaps in a marriage, but we don't, not really. No other person can fully understand us as God can, none no matter how hard they try and they have tried and keep on trying. We've thousands of books on the subject, we have a whole professional field all about trying to understand each other- psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, these fields delve into the human being in various ways and ultimately it is all about trying to understand what makes us tick emotionally, mentally, socially. The quest to understand each other is something that will never end and while there isn't anything wrong with trying, it's knowing that we can never understand the way God does that matters most. It's giving our Creator His due as our Creator. He wasn't a child playing with a lump of clay who holds up the squished ball of goo and says, 'Look what I made!', and that child has no more concept of what they've really made than the person looking at it. Oh they might say it's Daddy, and believe it is in their niavity but that child doesn't even know what makes up the clay they've used to squish into a vaguely human shape. God not only knows the composition of the clay, He created the clay to use to make man. That child playing with clay didn't create the clay, he didn't even create the dirt or the water used to make the clay. God is the Creator fully, in all ways.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
We are mere children toying with clay as we try to understand all there is to understand especially in the spiritual realm of our being. We can't create spirit, even if we can take clay and form an image and as some are trying to do- give it life artificial or not. We cannot create a spirit even if we can regrow animal parts in experiments and hope to regrow human parts from stem cells and such. We cannot create a spirit even if we put a sperm cell and an egg cell together and create a growing human baby. God alone, our Creator alone has the knowledge to create us as He does and to understand us as He alone can.
What God does is tells us to love one another as we love ourselves, meaning how we would be loved by others, only then do we really love someone- loving them as we would be loved, not as we are loved by others.
God is trying to teach us an important lesson here, very important. While we will never have the closeness with each other that He can have with us if we allow, we can love-- something that is unique from God-love. We can love each other and treat each other with love even when we don't understand or even like each other. Loving someone is a unique gift we have to offer. God allows us to love under the most horrific of circumstances. If you love someone who hates you they can't stop your love. They can never stop you from loving them. They can try even through torture, but they can't force you to ever stop loving them. Some might say they can't stop you from hating them either and that is true, but hating isn't of God. Hating hurts the hater even more than the one they hate. Love never hurts the one doing the loving- and I'm not saying love doesn't hurt, but if it's a love stemming from the love of God in us, it won't hurt us even if the one we love hurts us. The song, 'Love Hurts', is true to a point. Selfish love hurts. When we lose those we love we feel the pain of their loss, but most times people would never have traded the love they had with that person even knowing the pain it will ultimately bring. Yes, we hear people say as relationships end, 'I wish I never knew you!' And yet that sort of love isn't God's love. That love is wrapped up in a self-serving way. Yes, easy for me to say all this, but it's true. We are soooooo self-centered that all that matters to us is our own pain the heck with trying to understand anything beyond our own feelings. I hurt and that's that, nothing can change that so there. Pure selfishness. I know of where I speak, I've been caught up in that same hurt hundreds of times in my life. I know the pain in myself, I've seen it in others. It's a real pain, loving someone you open yourself up to being rejected by that person whether its a friendship relationship or more. Rejection hurts a lot and why, because who ever wants to be rejected? Even Christ felt the pain of rejection, though His was beyond ours so far that it's incomprehensible. He felt the rejection of the love He had to bring to people, He sorrowed over their loss because He didn't want to lose them eternally. He sorrowed with a Creator's sorrow. Our creature sorrow is just a tiny fraction of such love. We don't want to lose those we love by rejection or any other way, it pains us, the loss, the emptiness that loss results in, in our lives. Through it all we can continue to love, or we can choose to hate. Which would God have us do? Love. Loving someone and always wishing the best for them as you would wish for yourself is truly a gift from God. May God grant us the ability to truly love as He would have us love.
Joh 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
Joh 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
Joh 14:17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Love God
Love Man
Love.
To love you must believe. You must have someone or something to believe in to love that someone or something. Does anyone love nothing? Isn't that impossible? Loving means having something to love. If you have something to love you believe that something exists. No wonder we are told this--
Joh 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
Once we believe, we can love.
By the mercy and grace of our Lord and Savior, all glory and honor, all praise to our Creator the maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them. Thank you Lord for Your love. Help us to love as You would have us love. Help our unbelief, increase our faith all through the Comforter You've sent to dwell with us, in us. Through Your righteousness and none of our own, now and forever in Christ Jesus.
Amen
2/27/11