Send Me

Send me! Isaiah 6 is a common text of response, “Lord! Here I am, send me!” Youth camps, mission emphasis Sundays, etc. We love the glory and the hype around it, the feeling of being part of something great, big, grand. And believe me, to be participants in God’s story is something big, great, and grand.

Lord! Yes, I want to go, yes, I want to serve you; yes, I want to be faithful in evangelizing my neighbor, in serving in church, etc. But, Lord? This was not what I had imagined. This was not what I wanted. Is this the Christian life I signed up for?

Lord, send me… into suffering. Did Isaiah quake when he realized the difficulty of his mission? I cannot think of one servant of God who was called and did not suffer to some degree. Abraham had to wait for many years and wandered homeless. Moses was persecuted by Pharaoh, tested by his people. David also had to flee for his life. Jeremiah, Job, Paul, Peter. Do we know what we sign up for? Do we know what we mean when we say send me?

Lord, send me!....to suffering:

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church” (Col. 1:24).

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2;10).

For your name. For you walked those steps. May it be our love for the Lamb that was slain, the Lamb that was worthy that sends us! Did John’s heart after his vision in Revelation 5 just burn to endure anything to share the name of Christ, the name of the only one worthy to open the scroll? Fall a minute on your face with Isaiah and John. Tremble in his presence. Flashes of lightning still sear in front of your prostrate face. Trumpet blasts and roaring waters can only describe the heavenly voice that is so real it creates, so powerful in its weight of reality. Angels and elders and cherubims and living creatures swirl in colors. But the throne, oh the throne. And the Lamb who was the Lion of Judah. Yes, Lord, send me, even into suffering! For you are worthy.

Lord, send me… into a broken heart. This was Isaiah’s people. We know little of Isaiah’s life, but Jeremiah was sent on a similar mission, and in many passages we hear his weeping for his fellow Israelites. Weeping. And Paul reminds us that when one part of the body suffers, all should suffer. In a world of persecution, do we live that? Tim Keller says when we become a Christian, we experience more sorrow—our hearts are now hearts of flesh. We have a deeper love. And love hurts when another hurts. We weep for the lost, we weep for the defaming of God, we weep for the suffering that still streeps this world.

Yet, “send me”… and God explicates Isaiah’s mission. Immediately God says, “Go, and say to these people, keep on hearing, but do not understand… lest they understand with their hearts and turn and be healed…. Until there is devastation and exile and horror.” The very next chapter shows this in practice: Isaiah is sent to King Ahaz, who refuses to listen, who is blind to his own egoism and deaf to the warnings of the prophet.

Lord, send me!.... to a broken heart:

“I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers” (Rom. 9:2-3).

“in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from all other things, there is the daily pressure on my of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor. 11:27-29).

“Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!..... for they proceed from evil to evil” (Jer. 9:1, 3).

My people, my people! Cried Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Paul. And Jesus himself, weeping over Jerusalem for they did not know the things that would bring them peace, the Prince of Peace. They did not know the time of their visitation, the very presence of God in their midst. Weep as you drive down Tabor, James, Beecher in Adrian. Weep as you drive down Division and Breton in Grand Rapids. Weep as you drive down Main Street, First Street, Fifty-Fourth Street. Wherever. Do you see the people, really see them? Do you hurt for the brother in Christ who is still playing with the world? The sister in Christ who holds herself together with a plastic smile in church?

Broken heart—it hurts. But back to the throne room of God. It is not thunder that shakes the celestial floor beneath you, but the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, mighty peals of thunder, “Hallelujah! Praise God! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and exult! Glory to God! For the marriage of the Lamb has come!” (Rev. 19). See neighbors, strangers, people from every tribe, tongue, language. Drunks now coherent with praises rolling off their tongues in heavenly voices. Prostitutes now blazing in white purity. The greedy now sharing praise and love with hearts beating with joy so generous their ribs cannot contain it. The swindler glowing in pure integrity and honesty. Our heart may be broken now, but we cry send me knowing that God has his elect, God is working, God will bring his people, all that are his! It is sure!

Lord, send me… to the cross. Isaiah was rejected, mocked. Some believe he was martyred. In his role as prophet, in his role as a righteous sufferer, he prefigured our Lord. Isaiah, too, carried his cross. Are we willing? Lord, I will bear your cross. The Christian life is cruciform. Woe to those who seek glory instead of the cross. But it is there that we find the essence of mission. It is in the cross that we display our Savior more clearly. Our very form in which the “send me” takes in suffering, in cross bearing, glories out in brilliance the Savior.

“For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are also weak in him, but in dealing with you we live with him by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4).

“For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:11-12).

Lord, send me to the cross. May my mission, my means, my methods, my ways, my daily life show you, my suffering and ascended Savior. John, he overflows with titles for the blazing one. The endurance of our race, we know him as the Alpha and the Omega. The threats and persecutions, we know him as the One who Holds the Keys of Death and Hades. In our suffering, we know him as the Lamb who was Slain. In our darkness, we know him as the Morning Star. When the world rejects us, we know him as the One who gives us his new name and a new name. In our trials and struggles, we learn him in new ways. We show him to the world. The cross, our cross, shows our God anew. Our cross shows our God to the world.   

Lord, send me… to joy. Yes, to joy. There are various different joys… the joy of obedience. The joy of participating in his great and grand work. The joy of knowing this treasure—the life of Christ, the Spirit—in jars of clay. The joy of the fellowship of his sufferings (Phil. 3:10).

“Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love….. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who thought he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself…” (Phil. 2:2-11).

“Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).

Lord, send me to joy. Not joy just after the sufferings, after the broken heart, after the cross. Joy in it because we see Jesus in that. We know Jesus in that. We see Jesus in new ways in that. We feel his energy working so powerfully in us in that (Col. 1:28-29; 2 Cor. 3:5-6). And joy before that—joy in the worthiness of our Lamb, our Lord, that sends us out. And joy afterward—joy complete in the consummation when the bride is revealed. Holy, holy, holy joy that would crush our little hearts now! Pause it! Ponder it! The Bride that Christ has won, washed. The Bride that he has labored for through you! Joy, joy, joy! Send me to joy!