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Most of us can identify what's wrong with everyone else's speech long before we notice our own.
The colleague who always talks over people. The friend whose jokes have an edge. The relative who complains constantly and calls it venting. We hear them clearly. We hear ourselves less clearly, or not at all.
Then something happens that turns the volume up on our own voice, and suddenly we can hear what we sound like.
This week's theme: Speech.
Today, a prophet who had a vision of God, and the first thing he noticed was his own mouth.
ISAIAH
Isaiah 6 opens with one of the most extraordinary passages in the Old Testament.
Isaiah has a vision. He sees the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, the train of his robe filling the temple. Above him are seraphim, six-winged angelic beings, each calling to another.
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
The doorposts shake. The temple fills with smoke.
If you had been Isaiah in that moment, what would you have noticed about yourself?
Your unworthiness maybe. Your sin generally. Your smallness. Your fear.
Isaiah notices something more specific.
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.
He is standing before the throne of God. Seraphim are shouting. The building is shaking. And Isaiah, given a moment to name what is wrong with him, names his lips.
Not his heart. Not his hands. Not his history. His lips.
Why?
Because when you get close to real holiness, the thing you notice about yourself first is what leaves your mouth. It's the most exposed part of you. It's the part of you that has been slipping out of alignment with God for years, in a thousand small ways, most of which you have not been tracking.
Isaiah wasn't a bad man. He was about to become one of the greatest prophets in the Bible. But standing in that vision, in that light, the very first thing he could see about himself was that his mouth was not clean.
Then look at what God does.
One of the seraphim flies to him with a burning coal, taken from the altar, and touches his lips with it. And says this.
“See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
God doesn't lecture Isaiah about his speech. He doesn't give him a list of rules. He cleanses the specific part Isaiah has named. The mouth. The lips. The organ Isaiah has just realised is the problem.
And then, and only then, does God ask, "whom shall I send?" And Isaiah, with newly clean lips, says, "here I am. Send me."
Notice the order. The cleansing happens before the sending.
You will not be sent, in any meaningful sense, if your mouth is still full of the wrong things. Not because God can't use you. He can. But because your voice will not carry what it is supposed to carry. It will leak. It will contradict. It will cancel out with the second sentence what the first sentence tried to build.
The good news of Isaiah 6 is that God does not ask you to fix your own mouth.
He offers to touch it. To burn out what needs to burn out. To cleanse what has been slipping. But you have to name the problem first. You have to say what Isaiah said. My lips are the problem. I have been getting this wrong. Come and touch them.
That is the prayer for today
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
Pray Isaiah's prayer today. Out loud if you can.
"Lord, I am a person of unclean lips. Come and touch my mouth. Burn out what needs to burn out. Give me speech that carries what you want it to carry."
You do not need to feel dramatic about it. You just need to mean it.
Father, like Isaiah, when I stand in your presence the first thing I notice about myself is my mouth. Come and touch it. Cleanse what has been slipping. Burn out what needs to burn out. Make my speech carry your presence into every room I walk into today. Amen.
WATCH THE NEW VIDEO
This week's new video on the channel goes deeper into the things God is doing in the moments you feel most exposed before him. If Isaiah's response landed today, this one will too.
OVER TO YOU
What part of your speech would you most want God to touch today? Hit reply with one word. I read every one.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
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