Undone

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. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.” Isaiah 6:5-7

A PROPHET IS ONE who speaks for God. So certainly, Isaiah, the prophet, took pride in his ability to speak. His lips spoke for God himself to the people of Israel. If he were around today, he would be speaking at the biggest conferences and followed by millions on Twitter. Surely Isaiah felt about his lips the way a surgeon would feel about his or her fingers or a soccer player about his or her feet.

But when Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he saw himself, and his lips, in a new light. In the blazing light of God’s holiness, Isaiah could see that his lips were actually unfit for speaking for God. In the King James Version, Isaiah’s response reads: “Woe is me! For I am undone” (emphasis added). Undone. In the presence of the perfect purity of God, Isaiah’s sense of himself and his own goodness came completely unraveled.

As parents we want to encourage our children in their areas of strength. But these abilities and attributes can also puff them up. Our children’s strengths can become so entwined with their identities that when they are proven inadequate, our children are “undone.” It might be their special talent or appearance or position in their peer group. But the reality is that if their confidence and hope are in anything other than the grace of God, that “glue” is going to come apart.

Lord we want to be first-rate encouragers to _______ about his strengths and abilities. We want _______ to have the sense that he has something worthwhile to contribute to your cause in the world. But we don’t want _______’s identity to be anchored in his strong points, but we want your power put on display in his weaknesses. Give us wisdom to know how to encourage and affirm _______’s strengths while also encouraging him to find his identity in you.