POWER STUDY - A28

[Albert Finch]

Spiritual Sensory Deprivation
(Read Isaiah 1 & 6)

Isaiah 6:1-8 1In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” 4And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” 6Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.” 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

(In scripture, those who did encounter God saw things, heard things, smelled things, touched things, and tasted things. We often fail to recognize spiritual sensory deprivation because we have become hypnotized into living in an illusion of a spiritual world as flat as the visible world that people believed they lived in, in the time of Columbus. Our spiritual life needs to be delivered from the intellectual to the experiential. We get stuck in the things that keep us in a “flat” existence. Our view of reality becomes “flat”.)

Isaiah 1:3 “An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.”

(Isaiah was pointing out that God’s people did not know His voice, and comparing them to how even the ox and the donkey knows their master’s voice, yet the people of God did not “know” the voice of their God; i.e. they were suffering from SSD (Spiritual Sensory Deprivation.)

Mathew 25:6-12 6“But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7“Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8“The foolish said to the prudent, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9“But the prudent answered, ‘No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ 10“And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut. 11“Later the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open up for us.’ 12“But he answered, ‘Truly I say to you, I do not know you.’

(The ten virgins who were awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom; five were prepared while five were planning; the “planners” missed it! Either you are trying to ‘plan’ with your head or ‘prepare’ with your whole heart.)

Isaiah 40:3 A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Malachi 3:1 1“Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts.
John 1:26 26John answered them saying, “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know.

(When John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness at the Jordan he said, “prepare” not plan for the arrival of the Lord. He said I baptize with water to prepare them for the awakening of even something more powerful. He basically said, “the element I work with is water; the element He works with, by the spirit, is fire.” John got them “wet”; Jesus will get them “fired up.”)

POINTS OF MEDITATION:
I want to know Christ.

I want to come to my senses and fully experience the experience of the experience of God and God alone.

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