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I love that I can reread these marked up lines in my physical Bible (see photo taken at the beach last week). I need to learn the Word to be accurate in it but also understand how what when and why Jesus came. Inspired from Isaiah verse 6, I marked it up – especially cool to hear about God calling Isaiah, I said ‘come back to write about’ this. Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”

At a work training lately we have been remembering that the ‘Eisenhower Matrix’ helps us schedule tasks, Do Delegate Decide Delete, based on important or not, urgent or not. I appreciate this reminder to not spin my wheels, not multitask myself into getting practically nothing done, and ‘share the wealth of work’. I need to use it more, we all waste time not doing the things we should be doing. We have so many jobs so various and yet up to us, often, for how to get it done. Honestly I rely on the Lord not enough, it is SO important for someone in my position to literally come in and see where the Lord needs me to use my energies, what to do that day, it changes. There is much to do, but let us let the Lord shine the Light on the day.

Our callings and also simple rest will change in different days. Wherever we are in our faith, we have a calling to LISTEN, to sometimes or often act, to sometimes wait, to sometimes walk away. I’m always intrigued when God says DON’T do something. Worthy to work, yes. OK to sit, yes. Never wanting us to worry. ALWAYS willed to Worship, ALWAYS. 

“HERE I AM LORD, SEND ME.” Is what Isaiah said, for he became a prophet for helping God motivate people into correction and HOPE. He had to warn them but mention the blessed hope of Jesus Savior coming. 

Isaiah was amazed that God was picking him let alone speaking to him, essentially Isaiah said back to God: ‘I can’t do that! I’m not clean!’ But God showed him that He wanted him to help anyway, and found a way, and gave him a cleansing (us too). For Isaiah, amazingly, an angel cleaned up what was standing in his way by touching his lips with a coal from the Lord’s altar. The most important role now was speaking for God.

We should be so willing to ask the Lord to clean up our words – clean up our thoughts – clean up our act yes but our message for sure… Wherever we go, we can take the Lord with us, absorb His message from the Bible, see His hope in us, cultivate our listening, hear Him speaking to us from the Word, the moving Lines of His Face becoming the Lines of our Faith, embedded in our brains and ready for teaching and especially living. Each day is a new day. What tasks can we consider most urgent and important? Ask God. What do we leave behind? Ask God to help you prioritize, purge, pursue, pray on. Not everyone (very few) are called to prophesy – so ask God if that is you or not – may totally not be! God has many many gifts for us to share – encouragement is mine – so to be accurate in my encouragement I have to LEARN HIM MORE – learn His Ways (always above ours) – and Learn to listen to HIS HEART over my head. Then say: Lord, send me. I bet like for Isaiah, the message and the material will be set differently for each situation – we do need to be ready and then rely on God.

I’ve attached photos of my bibles of the moment. This new to me version is a King James Version and I like that as ‘classic’, the print is easy read – a physical tool that I thought could help me, so I don’t feel guilty marking it up with a pen, especially since I got it on sale, this can now be my travel ‘Beach Bible’ – easy to read in the sun with shades… My pink one is New King James Version, for home, it’s PINK because why not, I can also find it more easily, got that on sale too. My bible overview will help me connect the pieces. And my ‘go to’ Bible? On my phone of course. I use the Bible on my phone everyday, convenient for wherever I am, BibleGateway online… and that’s how I copy this important passage from Isaiah (see below). In order to do God’s work, we need to listen to Him first. Then say “Here I am, send me.”

DO. Don’t disregard or delegate His direction. Say: “Here I am Lord, Send Me.”

Amen 

Isaiah Called to Be a Prophet, chapter 6
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because 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.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ “Make the heart of this people dull, And their ears heavy, And shut their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And return and be healed.”

Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered: “Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, The houses are without a man, The land is utterly desolate, The Lord has removed men far away, And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. But yet a tenth will be in it, And will return and be for consuming, as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump.”