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Matthew Henry, the great Bible commentator, once said; "The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity." The times in which we are living are turbulent. Many Christians seem to be fighting one another rather than engaging themselves in the battle for the souls and hearts of people. That's disappointing because God has given us everything that we need to win this raging battle. All of the resources of the Eternal, Almighty God have been made available to us. But we must be a people of vision if we're to capture our generation for Christ. So I ask you again this week, "What's your vision?"
God placed a call upon the life of Isaiah, but He first gave Him a vision of Himself. In that vision the angels cried out, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His Glory." It's interesting to note that the angels shouted three times that God is holy. The Father is holy. The Son is holy, and the Spirit is holy. Everything about God is holy. Before God could use Isaiah, the prophet needed to see the absolute purity of God. Only when Isaiah saw God's holiness would he become the man that God longed for him to be. It would result in Isaiah being a humble and broken man.
Once Isaiah saw God's holiness, he cried out for grace and mercy. Similarly, I am convinced that the need of the church at the beginning of the twenty-first century is that of purity. Many of us have learned the methods of God, but have never come to an intimate knowledge of the God of the methods. When we come to know Him intimately, we too will walk in humility and experience revival in our hearts.
Roy Hession, who experienced revival in Eastern Africa, returned to Britain to discover that Christians had a false idea of the nature of revival. He said that many people thought revival was the top blowing off. They thought it was some super spiritual high. But he said that he believed revival was the bottom falling out. It was coming to the end of our selves.
When the bottom falls out in our lives, there's only one way to look - and that's up. That's precisely what the church needs today - a fresh view of God and His Holiness. When we begin to see Him in His absolute purity we will find ourselves broken before Him. We will cry out for grace and mercy. God will begin to cleanse us. We will find our lives changing. We'll become more like Christ. We will begin a great journey, one that leads us down the highway of holiness. Someone once said, "The object of the church is not to make people happy but to make people holy."
Holiness of life is an outgrowth of having seen God. So, I ask you one more time, "What's your vision?"
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