Overcoming Inadequacy - Isaiah

Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke. Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips.”

Isaiah 6:4-5

There is a joke about a man who visited his psychiatrist one day and complained of an inferiority complex. He told the shrink that no matter what he tried, all he could focus on were his own inadequacies. After listening to the man for a while, the doctor gave him a good news/bad news diagnosis: “The good news is that you don’t have a complex. The bad news is—you are inferior!”

Do you ever feel inferior or inadequate to serve God as a man, husband, father, businessman, or friend? If so, then you can probably identify with the prophet Isaiah.

Standing in the Temple in God’s presence, Isaiah looked into the mirror of God’s perfection and saw his own inadequacy staring back at him. I’m dead, he thought.

Isaiah knew he wasn’t fit to serve God, much less stand in his presence, but God had a plan and purpose for Isaiah. He would send him out to speak his message of wrath and judgment—and of love, forgiveness, and mercy.

Isaiah entered the Temple that day feeling completely inadequate for God’s purposes. Something had to be done about that, and only God could do it.

An angelic creature called a seraph approached Isaiah with a burning coal that he had taken from the heavenly altar, touched Isaiah’s lips with it, then pronounced his guilt removed and his sins forgiven (see Isaiah 6:6-7).

Something immediately changed within Isaiah. This man of God who only moments before had thought himself as good as dead heard the voice of God asking for someone to go and speak his message. Isaiah boldly called out, “Here I am. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

God had made Isaiah fit to serve, and the prophet knew it.

Do you ever feel inadequate to accomplish even the everyday things that God asks you to do? If so, remember that it’s not about your qualifications, but about the God who declares you fit to serve him wherever he has placed you.