Face-to-Face with Holiness

What happens when you have an encounter with God’s holiness? I can tell you what happened to three men who did and how their lives were transformed; they are still inspiring others to have their own encounters through their writing and their examples.

Isaiah Sees the Lord Almighty

One of the most gripping encounters with our Holy God is Isaiah’s call in Isaiah 6:1-8.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “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.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

At the time of this encounter. Isaiah was already a prophet and probably a priest. He is believed to have had a Godly heritage. Most people would have thought him to be steeped in holiness. Yet he is decimated by the reality of his own uncleanness when he has this stark encounter with the Lord Almighty. In this moment, he finally understands  that God’s holiness and purity are beyond what he had ascribed to God before. Isaiah sees for the first time how the sinfulness of his thoughts, words, and very being stand in stark contrast to God’s holiness. He sees his impurity up against the vision of unmarred purity.  He cries out in his woeful state and does not turn away from the live coal or anything else that will rescue him from his ruined state. He is forever changed.

Saul Encounters Jesus

When Saul encounters the Living God on the road to Damascus, not only is he blinded, he cannot eat or drink for three days. All he can do was pray. When he started down that road, he was the guy who had all the answers. After he meets Jesus on his journey, he can do nothing and say nothing until the Lord tells him what to do:

6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’

8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’

Notice that the encounter is very personal. None of his companions can understand what he experienced because this is the Lord Almighty speaking in a very face-to-face way with Saul only. Saul becomes Paul, a completely different man. He loses his identity and his pride in his position and knowledge. The only credential he will have from this point on is that he has met Christ and has become his bondservant.

When his sight is restored, he is ready to fulfill all the Lord has purposed him for. He is totally dependent on the Lord to tell him what to do, where to go, and what his future is. That is what an intense encounter with the Lord will do to a person.

Peter Really Sees Jesus

And I can imagine Peter’s encounter with Jesus in a small fishing boat in Luke 5. After a day of teaching and ministering, Jesus turns to Peter and speaks to him in a way that would shake up his life and launch him down the path of deep discipleship.

4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

It’s as if Peter sees Jesus for the first time. Jesus allows Peter to see Him in all His divinity, His power, and His purity. Peter immediately fell to Jesus’ knees in abject awareness of his own impurity. Peter wants Jesus to go away, because the stench of his own sin should not be in the presence of the Holy One.

Not all encounters are like Isaiah’s, Paul’s, and Peter’s. We cannot dictate to the Lord the ways He will reveal himself to us. But we can seek to know Him in this up close and intensely personal way. We can pray to be transformed, to give up our identities and aspirations and even our ministries for whatever He has assigned us. We can press in every day to listen better to his voice, to give Him all the space and time in our day He desires in order to change us. We can know that God can change us because His Word is filled with these remarkable stories of transformation. And God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Our encounters may not be dramatic or famous, but they will still have the personal impact we read about in the lives of others. The Lord still takes people in His hands and shapes them into the vessels He designed them to be before they were ever born. That encourages me. I want to be available for that. I want to have conversations with the Lord about that. I want to see the reality and putridness of my sin to the point that I welcome the burning coal and the rebuke. Our imperfect souls cannot know the depth of our sin, but I want to live daily with an awareness of the stark contrast between His incomprehensible holiness and my depraved and blighted way of looking at the world. And I want to recognize the humble things and the hard things He asks me to do when my assignments come. I am praising Him today that my confidence is in Him that He can do it, even with me.