Lord, What Were You Saying?

Ephesians 5:14; Isaiah 6:1-6

Only the power of God’s Holy Spirit can give us new life when we’re lost or awaken us when we’re already His but running from Him. Ephesians 5:13-14 compares God’s truth to a bright light. Imagine being asleep in a dark room when a stark light shines directly into your eyes.

“But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Christ, the only righteous one, does all the work. He jars us from our apathy, and the contrast of His light against our dark ways ushers us through conviction and into repentance. When the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of heaven and felt the searing realization of God’s holiness against his own depravity, he cried, “‘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” (Isaiah 6:5)!

That Scripture inspired a lyric in the bridge of “Awaken Me:”

“Come let your fire make holy these lips unclean. Shine down with all your glory. Awaken me.”

It is the prayer of someone once again awakened by God to the truth that we all sin and fall short of His glory. Anytime people come close to God in the Bible and understand they are in the presence of the Almighty, their reaction is always similar: “Woe is me. Just leave me. I don’t deserve to be here.”

The awakening moment is a convicting moment, and it’s a beautiful thing. Yet we must learn to distinguish between guilt and conviction. Guilt drives you back to slumber. Guilt says, “Just take something and roll over and go back to sleep. It’s not going to get any better.”

Conversely, the Holy Spirit’s grace and kindness leads us to repentance in Him. His conviction actually draws us to Him. It doesn’t chase us away. God doesn’t say, “Let Me get on to you for being bad.” God says, “Let Me wake you up so you can come back to Me.”

When we do, we are blessed when we take refuge in Him, when we taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8) He takes us to a place where we join with the psalmist to beg, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:10, 12). Notice that God is still the one doing the upholding even when our spirits are finally willing to obey again.

Isaiah suffered through his aforementioned stark moment in his blinding vision of a holy God, but he also tasted God and saw that He is good. We know this because of the promise God personally left Isaiah—and all of us:

“For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the (human) spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made…. He went on backsliding in the way of his own heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him” (Isaiah 57:16–18, parenthesis added).