Isaiah 6:1-3 ESV  In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Dear Fellowship of the Burning Heart:

Isaiah saw the Lord. This is the need of the hour. A. W. Tozer, the author of The Pursuit of God, also wrote another classic work: Knowledge of the Holy. It is in this book that he writes about the character of God as revealed in the Word. It is truly a majestic work about a magnificent subject. He explains in the Preface, that he wrote the book because of the low view of God he had observed in the Church.

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, ”Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century.

This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field.

The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

So, it was at a time when others were entertaining a low view of God, that Isaiah saw him high and lifted up. Exalted, his glory filled the temple and the seraphim worshiped and served him, crying, “Holy, holy, holy!” Isaiah saw the Lord, sovereign, exalted, and reigning. When we see the Lord, everything else falls into proper perspective. Isaiah saw the true King of Israel and he knew that with God in control, he could rest confidently in God’s will. We must begin to think of God more nearly as He is, and the only way to do this is to seek a renewed vision of the God revealed to us in the Bible.

The way to know someone is to learn about their character. My dad was a firm, but caring man. He raised more vegetables than he could ever eat because he wanted to be able to share his crops with others. He had little patience for fools, but he was kind to strangers, a lover of nature, patient with the sincere learner, and an avid farmer. The more I describe his character, the more you get to know who he was.

The same is true about God. To know him is to learn more and more about his character. To study the many facets of his character allows us to gain a deeper knowledge of his nature and a greater appreciation of his majesty. Much preaching and teaching today focuses on us: who we are, what we need, how we can succeed, etc. What we need is more emphasis on who God is, not on what we want him to be, or make him out to be.

Will you join me in praying that God will open to us a new and glorious view of his nature as we seek him this year?