January 3: Isaiah 6:1-13

Please use this as an aid to your daily prayers. Do not use it as a substitute for prayer, and do not let it become a distraction from prayer. It is provided as a guide to help prepare you for your prayer time.

The Author

The Inward View

Then I said, Woe is me! For I am undone; for 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, Jehovah of Hosts. (Isaiah 6:5 MKJV)

Those who truly see God as He is can only respond in ardent humility. An encounter with holy God immediately confronts us with our sinfulness. Hearing true worshippers praising God reminds us of the impurity of our own mouths. —Blackaby Study Bible Note on Isaiah 6:5

We come into the presence of God with tainted souls. We come with our own concept of morality, having learned it from books, from the newspaper, and from school. We come to God dirty—our whitest white is dirty, our churches are dirty, and our thoughts are dirty—and do nothing about it!

If we came to God dirty, but trembling and shocked and awestruck in His presence, if we knelt at His feet and cried with Isaiah, “I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips,” then I could understand. But we skip into His awful presence. We’re dirty, but we have a book called Seven Steps to Salvation that gives us seven verses to get us out of our problems. And each year we have more Christians, more people going to church, more church buildings, more money—and less spirituality and less holiness. We’re forgetting “holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”

I tell you this: I want God to be what God is: the impeccably holy, unapproachable Holy Thing, the All-Holy One. I want Him to be and remain THE HOLY. I want His heaven to be holy and His throne to be holy. I don’t want Him to change or modify His requirements. Even if it shuts me out, I want something holy left in the universe.

—The Attributes of God by A.W. Tozer

APPLICATON

Having spent time dwelling on God’s character, His holiness, do you now observe areas in your life that are sinful, do you recognize areas of disobedience, do you see failures that you have not noticed before but the Holy Spirit has now brought to your attention?

PRAYER

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. 

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. 

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

(Psalms 51:1-19 ESV)