Start With Me

Read

Isaiah 6:3-5 "And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.'"

Think

Isaiah is on the floor.

He has just seen the Lord, high and exalted. He has heard angels call him holy three times over, loud enough to shake stone. And the first words out of his mouth are not “Wow,” and they are not “Thank you.” They are “Woe to me, I am ruined.”

That seems like a strange reaction to something beautiful. It makes more sense once you understand what light does.

Your phone screen can look perfectly clean when you’re inside. You use it all day and never think twice about it. Then you step outside into the sunlight, look down, and suddenly you see everything. Fingerprints. Smudges. Dust. Marks you didn’t even know were there.

The sunlight didn’t make your screen dirty. It just showed you what was already there.

When Isaiah saw God clearly, he saw himself clearly, and it happened in the same moment. It almost always does.

What makes this remarkable is what came right before it. Go back and read the five chapters ahead of this one. Isaiah has been doing a lot of talking about everybody else. Chapter after chapter of woe. Woe to the people who do this. Woe to the ones who call evil good. He has a list, and honestly, the list is accurate.

Then he sees God, and the woe finally lands on him. Not woe is Judah, though he had five chapters of material on Judah. Woe is me.

This is the part we skip. You can want revival at your school and mean something very self-flattering by it. We say we want God to move, and what we often mean is that we want God to fix the people who annoy us. The party crowd gets serious. The group that left you out gets nice. The teacher who does not like you develops a personality. And you, conveniently, stay exactly the same.

But nothing real has ever started with looking at how bad everyone else is. It starts with God, starting with me.

So before you ask God to change your school, ask him what he wants to change in you.

Two very different people are reading that sentence right now.

Some of you walk into that building genuinely believing the problem is everybody else. You have your list. You are the reasonable one. If that is you, this verse is asking you to turn the light around.

But some of you are the opposite. You do not need one more voice telling you what is wrong with you, because you already have a running list and it plays on a loop at midnight. You read “Woe to me” and think, yeah, and this is just Tuesday.

So watch what Isaiah actually does, and watch what he does not do.

He gets specific. He does not say he is worthless. He says he is a man of unclean lips. He names an actual thing, and a specific thing can be dealt with.

He says it out loud, in the presence of God, instead of alone in his own head. He is not spiraling. He is telling the truth to someone safe.

And he says it for exactly one verse. One. In verse 5 he is ruined, and by verse 7 he is clean. God does not leave him lying there.

Being honest with God is not the same as being harsh with yourself. You are not being asked to spend this year hating who you are. You are being asked to stop pretending the phone is clean.

You can keep squinting through the streaks and blaming the sun. Or you can admit what you have been looking through.

Apply

Turn the light around – Before you pray a single word about your school this year, ask God a different question and then stay quiet long enough to hear an answer: what do you want to change in me? Write down the one specific thing that comes up. Not "I am a bad person," but something real, with edges, that could actually be dealt with.

Pray

God, I have been keeping a list about everybody else and reading it to you like it was a prayer. I am putting it down. Start with me instead. Show me what is actually there, not so I can beat myself up about it, but so I can stop pretending with you. I am done acting like I have it together. In Jesus' name. Amen.