“Then I heard the Lord asking, ‘Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?’ I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’” – Isaiah 6:8 (NLT)

God is constantly looking for a person who will go for him. There are things God cannot accomplish on this earth without the cooperation of people. That’s mind blowing! God is all knowing, ever present and all powerful, and yet he has designed life in such a way that he “requires” a person to go for him. God doesn’t force people or manipulate them. He influences and compels, for sure, but we have to make the decision. We have to be willing to say, “Here I am. Send me.”

Isaiah was a prophet. The desire and drive to speak the Word of God was programmed into his DNA before he was born. But he still had to be willing to work with what God had built into him. Even though most of us may not be prophets, we have the same opportunity. Will we be what God created us to be? Will we say yes to the calling he’s placed on our lives? Will we be willing to go when he wants to sends us?

Sometimes when I read this verse I imagine Jesus himself saying the words of Isaiah to the Father. “Here I am. Send me.” It’s easy to get wrapped up in the complexity of the trinity and not realize Jesus had to willingly choose to be the Sacrifice and the Redeemer. As a man on earth he had to process the thought – I will go to the cross and suffer pain and separation from the Father in order to reconcile man to God. And then he had to make the decision to walk that thought out. He had to go where God sent him. Willingly.

Going isn’t always easy, but going can sometimes be wasted if we do it with the wrong intentions or with misplaced faith. We need to know the truth about what we’re going for. Who we’re going for. When we know we’re going because God called us to go and that he goes with us, we can say, “Here I am. Send me.”