A few weeks ago, I stepped onto my deck to start the grill. The deck has been there for a few years. I had built it with treated wood. I had water-proofed it. I had maintained it as best as I could and as well as I could determine. It looked like a really solid deck. However, as I walked toward the grill, my next step went right through the deck to the ground below! I’m sure you gasped and wondered if I was ok. I was fine. The ground below is only about 12 inches below.
Now, I had to examine the deck thoroughly. It looked solid. It even seemed solid the last time I had been on it. However, upon closer examination, it was in bad shape. I removed a few planks and saw very quickly that the problem was not just the planks of the deck floor. The floor joists were also a problem. The verdict was in! A new deck was on the horizon.
Externally, the deck looked fine. Sure, it had a few years on it. But, there was nothing about the look of it that screamed—NEW DECK!! It was not until looking deeper was I able to see the real problem. The foundation was the issue. It was bound to happen that the area above was going to go bad when the foundation crumbled.
This same scenario played out with the prophet Isaiah some 2600 years ago. He was given a vision that that forced him to look at his foundation. He recounted the event in Isaiah 6:1-8. He said, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings; with two he covered his face with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory! And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.”
This scene is almost too spectacular to imagine and yet Isaiah seems to be peering into the very portals of heaven itself! That scene would surely overload the senses of anyone fortunate to see it. Isaiah’s reaction would probably be the same one that I would have. “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 my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
In that moment, Isaiah’s foundation was shaken. He was not now only face-to-face with God, he was also seeing what God saw as He was face-to-face with him! His immediate reaction was to acknowledge that his foundations were unstable. He needed help. He could not face God with the current condition of his life foundation.
Thankfully, he did not need to remain in that condition. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from t he altar. And he touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away and your sin purged.” In that moment, God repaired his foundation. And in that moment, Isaiah heard a call. “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’” Isaiah gave a simple answer. “Here am I send me.” When we truly see ourselves and allow God to fix the foundation, He will call us into service. Will I be ready to answer the call?
— Mike Johnson
