In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. - Isaiah 6:1

God told Moses, “You may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). No one can look at God and live because God is so holy and we are so unholy. Yet Jesus said that “God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). We will “see” God when our hearts are pure, but how does that happen?

In a vision, Isaiah saw the holiness of God. Such a realization of the Lord’s holiness brought about a searing awareness of his own sinfulness.

Whenever we see God’s holiness with the eyes of faith, we will find ourselves reacting as the prophet Isaiah did. Yet as soon as we verbalize this sense of our own sinfulness, God will move in to clean us up.

The very “holiest” of Christian people sin. It will be so until we get to heaven. The woman who is ready for God to cleanse her, however, is the woman God can use (Isaiah 6:8).

Even though the great prophet Isaiah was a holy man, he needed God’s cleansing in order to see God aright and see what God wanted him to do. There is happiness in holiness. Cleansing and contentment go together.

The only way to keep our heart pure is to constantly turn to God for forgiveness and cleansing. That makes us “holy” in his eyes. Being holy brings a holy happiness only God can offer. We need to take him up on it.

For Further Study: Isaiah 6:1-13

Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.

SPECIAL OFFER