Spirit: Path To Praise - The Overflow Devoنموونە

Magnify (We Are Messengers)

Realign where my hope is set
Until You’re all that’s left
But just a glimpse draws my heart to change
And one sight of You lays my sin to waste
I don’t need to see everything just more of You

Roughly 900 years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah had a life-shattering, eternity-shaping encounter with God. Isaiah 6 paints us a vivid picture of this historical event:

‘I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up...And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called...And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; 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, the LORD of hosts!

...he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”’

First recall the identity of Isaiah. He was a prophet for God’s people, a man with unparalleled godliness and relational connection to God. Yet, when the Holy Spirit gave him a glimpse of the holiness and utter otherness of God, Isaiah was emotionally and physically crushed and undone by the sight. This new Holy Spirit vision of God was like a burning spotlight flipped on in the midst of a place that had only, ever known darkness. Places once thought clean or at least moderately un-dirty become exposed as sickeningly filthy by the light of the vision of God’s holiness and glory.

But this is not where God leaves us after He makes His holiness and our sinfulness seen and felt.

Just as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the gravity of our sin and the terror of God’s holiness, He also leads us gently by the hand to the solution for our state of spiritual undone-ness...Jesus. The Spirit gives us faith to believe Jesus and then powerfully changes us into eternally forgiven and loved new creations.

Through faith in Jesus, Christ followers are made eternally sinless, clean, and beloved in the eyes of God. However, until we are with Him and free from sin, we live conflicting lives in the fallen world. We face the daily need to realign where our hope is set. We are natural drifters, wanderers, and forgetful sheep. As Christ followers, we will only experience joy and living full lives when our hope is appropriately and undividedly placed on Jesus.

Where might you be placing your hope this week outside of Jesus? What will you be tempted to “worship” because you believe it will provide you the peace and joy that only Jesus can? Is it a relationship, an achievement, a possession, an experience, etc.? Placing our hope in anything other than Jesus always leave us worse off than when we started; more unfulfilled, disappointed, and desperate to move on to the next bigger or better thing.

Invite your loving God and Father to empower you today, through His Holy Spirit, to believe that He is everything you need, that you are eternally beloved and cherished in His sight (even when you sin), and that He is the One we should hope in. He will not let you down today! Cry out to Him.