“…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.” (Isaiah 6:5, NIV).

Weakness is something we would all like to live without.  We try to live good and righteous lives, to reject temptation, and follow the Bible every day.  Yet, no matter how hard we try or how much improvement we make, we still fall and sin.

It is in these moments that despair can overtake us.  It feels like no matter how much effort we expend, that we will never be rid of the sin completely.  The most discouraging aspect of all is that this sickening feeling is absolutely true.  The Word tells us that although we might move closer toward perfection, we will never fully achieve it.  John makes this perfectly clear when he writes, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

My source of encouragement when forced to admit my own weakness is the fact that I am in good company.  In truth, every great servant of God who ever lived, from Moses to Paul, all struggled with sin.  Isaiah, who was arguably the most righteous man of his day, falls on his face before the splendor of God and confesses, “I am a man of unclean lips.”  He was.  In the same way that Moses was, and David was, and Daniel was, and Paul was, and I am- Isaiah was a sinner.  Our weaknesses are all exposed in the light of His greatness.

But isn’t it grand that God still uses the weak for His glory?  Immediately following Isaiah’s brokenhearted confession, God states that He is searching for someone to be His man.  Isaiah boldly cries out, “Here am I, SEND ME” (Isaiah 6:8), and the rest is history!

Kerry

In today’s postmodern culture there are few things as despised as “co-dependency.”  The term is generally used to describe a pitiful individual who cannot survive without the support of another person, who usually mistreats them for their trouble.  The TV talk shows are overcrowded with these sad stories and the self-proclaimed hosts/part-time psychiatrists who tell them that their problem is that they are not independent enough- that that rely upon others and should only ever rely upon themselves.

Certainly we feel for people who are trapped in such situations.  But is the problem really their total reliance upon another, or is it WHO they have become reliant upon?  In scripture we are told that we CANNOT do it all on our own- that we must give up our pride and humbly place our TOTAL trust in God.  We must become reliant- DEPENDANT- upon Him!

This message really doesn’t sit well with our American individualism.  The only person we want to need is ourselves.  It just seems so weak to total depend upon someone else.  But we must.  We have to come to the sobering realization that we cannot do it alone, that “Without HIM I would be NOTHING…”

Kerry