"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!'" Isaiah 6:8.

You know, I've heard this verse plenty of times, but hearing it is different from reading it. God just proved this to me right now. As I was waiting for God to tell me what to write, the word Lord caught my attention. Throughout the Old Testament, LORD is typed in all caps. Here, however, only the L is capitalized. Now what's so important about that?

Isaiah saw Jesus! In the New Testament, Lord refers to Jesus, the Messiah, the Son. In the Old Testament, LORD refers to God in heaven, the Father. When "the voice of the Lord" says, "[Who] will go for us?" He is referring to Himself, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. Although Jesus is hidden, yet always present, throughout the entire Old Testament, in Isaiah 6:8 we see Him for real. The Trinity didn't just come into play in the New Testament.

Now pay attention to Isaiah's response: "Here am I. Send me!" This was only a vision, but to him, it was as real as real could get. He had seen the Messiah, and he was so excited about it that he was eager to go tell what he had seen.

Before Jesus was even born on earth, Isaiah saw Him and was eager to preach salvation through Him. But today, 2000 years after Jesus lived, died, and rose again, we are content to sit around and not tell anyone about God. Isaiah didn't know for sure that what he had seen would come true in the future, but he still gave himself fully to the work of the Lord. We, however, know that the Messiah has already come, and yet we do nothing with that knowledge.  But God's entire purpose for us is to send us to the unreached and unbelieving. And we are to be eager to do it. We should not be like the people of Isaiah's time, being so lukewarm that the faithful cannot be found. We are "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that [we] may declare the praises of Him who called [us] out of darkness into His wonderful light" (1 Peter 2:9).

So let that be our prayer, our cry to God: "Here am I. Send me!" And we will be the image of the Lord to the peoples of the world.