Embrace the Vision

The sixth chapter of Isaiah tells us that Isaiah's career choice was to serve as a priest in the Temple.  As a young man he could see nothing else in his future.  He spent the best part of his youth training and preparing for the day when he would serve Yahweh and the people of Israel as a priest in the place most holy in all the land.  It was on an ordinary day of service that his life changed.  God appeared to him in a way that Isaiah described by writing, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of His garment filled the Temple."  (Isaiah 6:1).  Within that moment of vision, he saw himself as a sinner and a man whose sin was blotted out as his lips were touched by a live coal.   

The final part of the vision was an act of sending forth to become a prophet.  His future would no longer be centered in the Temple speaking the words of religious ritual, but centered in a community of people where he would speak as the voice of the Lord.  The experience of Isaiah reminds us that God does not bring us to moments where it seems that we are walking midst the clouds of glory so that we will have a great witness on testimony night, but so that we can be about the great things He has in His heart for us to do.  The greater thing He has planned may not be bringing a nation to revival, but to bring us to a place where we will choose to live a kinder and more gentle life where the heart of Christ can quietly touch the lives of hurting people.  

When a vision comes, we should never put it in the file of precious memories.  Visions come for a reason.  They come to carry us from where we are to where God wants us to be.  They equip and empower us for a service which would not be seen without going through the vision.  A vision seen and from which we walk away will always have us looking over our shoulder wondering what might have been.  When God's holiness breaks in upon us in an extraordinary way, never look behind for God is surely sending us forward.