January 4: 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 Outward View

One mission at home and abroad!

This is a way to express the concept that there are not two missions, home and foreign, but one Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) that extends from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Now that Isaiah is prepared to serve God, God Himself issues the call:

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8 ESV)

There is still a great need for laborers to go into the harvest field (Matthew 9:37). The Lord is looking for willing laborers who will simply say: “Here I am! Send me.” What is keeping Christians from joyfully responding?

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

(Romans 10:14-15 ESV)

The Lord is calling: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Sadly, fewer are answering the call to go…anywhere…to take the Good News to someone else.

APPLICATION

Barna Research has just produced a new major study on the state of evangelism in the US. They found that:

A majority of practicing Christians does not consistently support evangelism, and 47 percent of Millennial Christians believe it is flat-out wrong to evangelize. This invites us to ask difficult questions, including what has gone so wrong with our gospel presentation that a majority of Christians hesitates to wholeheartedly support it.

Compounding this are factors that depress Christians’ ability to reach out to others skillfully—most conspicuously, that Christians are the faith group least likely to have friends who are different from them.

Christians must realize we are not doing evangelism on a clean slate. Cultural perceptions and Christianity’s poor reputation are actively de-converting people raised in church and hardening non-Christians against evangelistic efforts.

God does want to work in your life. God will work in your life if you give Him the opportunity. But God never stops there. God wants to work through your life. There is a needy world out there. It’s in darkness. You are dwelling in the midst of people of unclean lips. And they need to know that God will wash and cleanse them also. So the work of God in your life always ends up objectively. First of all subjective, what God can do for you. But then what God can do through you to touch others. And that’s what it’s all about.

-– Chuck Smith Commentary

Once God has touched your life, then God wants to use your life to touch others. God has a work that He wants to do. And the problem is always, who will go for us? Whom will we send? Jesus said, “Behold the fields are white unto harvest but the laborers are few” (Mat. 9:37). Who will go for us? Whom shall we send? The man whose life has been touched by God becomes an available instrument for God. “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” And his commission:

And so God said to him, Go, and tell this people (Isa. 6:9).

–- Chuck Smith Commentary

Is the GOOD NEWS still good news?

Why are we willing to share freely, even gleefully, about the new Italian restaurant we loved, or the station where we found the cheapest fuel, or the latest vacation we took, but do not share openly the greatest news we have ever received?

Can’t we see that the failure to share the Gospel is just as much disobedience (neglecting to do what we have been commanded) as sinning (doing what we are commanded to avoid)? Sins of omission are just as sinful as sins of commission.

PRAYER

Dear God,

You have told us that we are to love You supremely, with all our mind, heart, soul, and spirit. We are also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Lord, we know that You have reminded us that if we love You, we will obey Your commands. We confess that we have not allowed Your love to compel us to go and share your message freely and widely. We have failed to be Your ambassadors to this lost world. We have failed to fulfill the Great Commission in our lives and in our churches. Please forgive us for this coldness, this complacency, this callousness.

We want Your heart to see people as You see them. We want Your compassion to move us as You were moved, when You looked upon the people, harassed and helpless, scattered as sheep without a shepherd. We want to care about their condition the way You cared and to seek to alleviate their suffering and misery as You did. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we can truly love and serve the way You did.

Most of all, give us willing hearts to respond as You did in the garden, “Father, not My will but Yours be done.” Help us to be willing to say, “Here I am! Send me.”