It was in That Year
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. (Isaiah 6:1)
In my father’s generation, the death of U.S. President Kennedy was a defining moment in the history of the people, and it set the tone arguably for what men did after those days. Today I think all of us will agree that when the twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing down, we saw not only a generational icon crash, but a spiritual and cultural fall that many will look back and say like Isaiah that in the year of the fall of the tower, “I was …..”
The weekend after 9-11 saw churches across North America filled with people seeking to find solutions. The king of mammon had fallen from his thrown and they did not know what to do. We are still standing around today nine years later unwilling to see the Lord high and lifted up.
Like Isaiah, we too have huge icons in our world that represent our future and the security of the people. Uzziah was an amazing man by all account. He was a spiritual giant of a man, an engineer, artist, military genius and a prolific inventor. The people were in awe of his accomplishments and as long as he was king, no one dared to enter Israel’s territory.
The people began to get so dependent on this great king that they no longer saw that the Lord was truly the One who protected them and gave them the victory and peace from all of their enemies.
Over and over again God has to remove our friends in order to bring Himself in their place, and that is where we faint and get discouraged. In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was, died ─ I gave up everything? Became ill? Got disheartened? Or I saw the Lord? - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
I think if we all just stopped long enough to search our hearts, we would realize that we have so much in common with those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They thought that Jesus, their teacher and leader, was going to usher in the golden age of Israel and they would see the power of God restore their nation to its former glory just like the prophets said.
But they could not see that His death opened the door for them to see the Lord high and lifted up and that because of Christ’s death and resurrection, they would have a revelation of God that they would never have had if Jesus fulfilled their dreams for Him.
God’s plan for you will require death to friends, dreams, prophetic words and visions in order for you and I to see Him as He really is today.
“There is an “efficacy of disillusionment” for marriages, for fellowships, indeed, for disappointment with the church itself that we sorely need. We had thought a fellowship would have been ‘ideal’” (Arthur Katz). Perhaps the right ministry or carrier will be my ticket to future blessing and “God using me for His glory.” But, dear friends, I have found out that these wonderful experiences can and many times block out our revelation of God Himself and until they are ripped from us, we cannot see Him as He really is.
Perhaps you have embarked on a search for yet another one-not recognizing that ‘King Uzziah’ is given in order to die. It is seeing the Lord’s sovereignty, the supremacy of His Lordship in a death of a ‘king’ that enables us to glimpse Him as holy, holy, holy.
My prayer for you in this season of your life is that you embrace the sovereign God’s pruning and removing of your kings, so that you may once again see Him high and lifted up in your life and ministry. God’s plan for your life will require Him not only adding to your life, but removing from you anything that will block the “Son” from shinning on you.
Blessings to you! May the rest of your summer be wonderful and God-ordained. – Apostle Anthony Nelson