Becoming!
- Oct 17, 2025
- 5 min read
Selwyn Hughes says, "Christians seem preoccupied with knowing more about themselves instead of being anxious to know more about God. Any Christian bookshop manager will tell you the bestselling books are on self-image, managing money, finding inner healing. All important, but the most important thing is to know God and to know him better."
We said last week that ‘beholding’ must come before ‘becoming.’ We have to spend time in His presence, His word, in prayer, beholding God. We asked last week, what gets your attention? What do you spend your time gazing at?
Please note, ‘we are not human beings we are to be human becomings!’
God still desires that everyone of us, as believers, move into new dimensions of His glory, encountering deeper revelations of His presence and experience transformation of our lives and purpose. Such should empower us for service and enable us to reflect His glory to the world.
Max Lucado once said, “Moses asked to see it on Sinai. It billowed through the temple, leaving priests too stunned to minister. When Ezekiel saw it, he had to bow. It encircled the angels and starstruck the shepherds in the Bethlehem pasture. Jesus radiates it. John beheld it. Peter witnessed it on Transfiguration Hill. Christ will return enthroned in it. Heaven will be illuminated by it. It gulf-streams the Atlantic of Scripture, touching every person with the potential of changing every life. Including yours. One glimpse, one taste, one sampling, and your faith will never be the same … Glory. God’s glory."
God’s glory is one of the most awe-inspiring and powerful aspects of His nature. His glory represents His presence, His power, and His holiness.
Throughout Scripture, people who experienced God’s glory were transformed.
Isaiah 6 is the going public of God’s holiness. God puts His holiness on display. This is what it says in Leviticus 10:3: God says: "I will be shown to be holy among those who are near me and before all the people I will be glorified."
God is glory-centred, shouldn’t this mean we should be also?
For those caught up in the busyness of life, not even finding time to read God’s word or to enter His presence in worship and prayer, we need to hear “Be still and know that I am God”. Why? It becomes the means, the threshold to His Glory!
The ‘Shekinah’ glory of the Lord refers to God’s abiding, continuing presence among a community of His people. The ‘Shekinah’ therefore refers to the presence of God that was physically manifested.
The first thing Isaiah experienced in his visit to the temple that day was the holiness of God. God filled the temple where Isaiah was. Where it says, “The train of His robe filled the temple” implies that there is no room for anyone else. God fills the temple with His majesty, His glory and splendour.
Isaiah 6:3 says that angels are crying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty." The next thing they say is: "The whole earth is full of his"... and you might have expected them to say holiness, they don’t, they say "glory."
What happened next? The work of ‘becoming’ begins, and takes on a whole new meaning.
Sometimes, it is not just what we do but about what we are ‘becoming’, and what needs to change about ourselves, that is the evidence of a God encounter.
Maybe it is an attitude that needs to be changed, or a relationship that needs mending, or a deeper commitment to holy living that needs to be made. The response is as unique as each individual, but God does not intend for our ongoing relationship with Him to stop after a 90 minute session on a Sunday morning! He intends for it to go on in faithful witness to the world!
Notice what happened in Isaiah’s ‘becoming’.
Becoming Changed (6:5)
Isaiah's eyes are opened in this profound vision, where he sees the Lord God Almighty in all His glory. You can’t encounter God in this way and not be changed.
Did Isaiah need a refresher course in the holiness of God? Apparently!
In this moment, God made himself known to Isaiah. God's holiness is not an aspect of who he is or what he does; God's holiness is the essence of who He is. Isaiah saw God as He really is – HOLY, full of GLORY! He also saw himself as he really was, and realised he needed to ‘change.’
Isaiah said: “Woe to me! 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” (6:5).
The word he used actually meant that he was about to disintegrate.
What is interesting here is that Isaiah was not a bad person. Yet when Isaiah came in contact with a holy God, the glory of God, he saw himself for what he really was.
Notice Isaiah’s focus was on God alone. God was the audience of one!
Christian life is primarily about a person to love rather than a practice to live. So, what or who is the priority in your life, your work, your relationships? What needs to change?
John Owen states, “Let us live in the constant contemplation of the glory of Christ, and virtue will proceed from Him to repair all our decays, to renew a right spirit within us, and to cause us to abound in all duties of obedience.”
Becoming Cleansed (6:6-7)
Isaiah’s imperfection stands in complete contrast to God’s white-hot purity. So, one of the seraphs took a live coal and symbolically “cleaned” Isaiah up. Isaiah was purified, so to speak. The seraph said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for” (6: 7).
He touched me, oh, He touched me
And oh, the joy that floods my soul
Something happened, and now I know
He touched me, and made me whole
The seraph was making Isaiah fit to serve a holy God.
There’s something wonderful and releasing in knowing that you’ve been cleansed, especially when you know you don’t deserve it.
Being a Christian calls for genuineness, authenticity and transparency.
It's not about earth’s applause but heaven’s favour; serving and living for the 'Audience of One.'
So, Isaiah 6 shows how encountering God’s glory leads to repentance.
I believe if we truly encounter God, we will be changed. I can’t see how we can have an encounter with God and walk away the same as we arrived.
Be still for a moment!
Charles Swindoll says, “God is able to take your life, with all of the heartache, all of the pain, all of the regret, all of the missed opportunities, and use you for His glory.”
Becoming Called - (6:8-9a)
The final step in this process of encountering God’s glory was Isaiah’s response. After he had experienced forgiveness, he could have gone away, joyfully thanking God for all that God had done for him. Isaiah could have left the temple with a warm fuzzy feeling about what he had experienced, but have done little else.
“Here am I; send me!” is the only response that is acceptable when we truly have encountered the Lord and His glory. It's essential in our Christian life of 'becoming!'
Having seen God, seen ourselves for what we are, and being forgiven of our sin, the natural response should be: “Here am I. Send me!” (6:8).
One of the greatest needs of the church today is for those of us who make up the church to live transformed, counter-cultural lives that draw attention to God and to Him alone.
John Piper said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
May it be so for His GLORY!
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