Here I Amনমুনা

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1

We don’t know if this was a dream Isaiah had while lying in bed or a vision that came to him as he stood in the temple. But either way, I have to imagine that it came as a shock to Isaiah. There he was, having pleasant dreams or a nice day praying in the temple, and boom, God is there, throne and all, with a robe like a billowing cloud filling more and more of the space.

So, it is with us. Before we came to Christ, we probably operated more or less blissfully with almost no communication with—or even awareness of—God. We went our separate ways. But then we became aware of Him somehow, and this eventually led to us believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths that He is Lord (Romans 10:9). First, we were unaware of His proximity to us, and then we became very aware of it, as happened with Isaiah.

But this is also the sequence when we, as Christians already, begin to sense that God might be calling us to something else, to some higher or deeper work, in His service. We’d been going along happily, doing what we do, even serving the Lord to the best of our ability. And then something enters our thoughts or our awareness, and we start to see Him filling the temple again and coming near in a special way for a special reason.

It often occurs to us as a feeling of growing discontent. Not that we’re tiring of walking on the narrow way. It’s not greed or unhappiness but a sort of holy discontentment. The sense that God is up to something and it might possibly involve us, but when, oh when, will He reveal it to us? It’s a feeling you can’t shake that tells you something is wrong with the world that someone should do something about, and that maybe that someone should be you.

Think about it

Is there an “itch you can’t scratch,” a holy discontentment, that is causing you to wonder if God might be calling you to something bigger than what you’re currently doing?