Prelude to Beholding the Glory of God
(Overcomer Wu)

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord...” Isaiah 6:1

Our Scripture reading is the story of king Uzziah. But first, consider Isaiah, chapter six, where we are told Isaiah had a vision. He saw the glory of God; he saw God seated upon His throne. The Scripture says in Isaiah 6:1, "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord...” Why is it mentioned that Uzziah died before the glory of God came to Isaiah? On occasion you will find in the Scriptures that before the glory of God comes to the people of God, someone has to die, or a particular group of people have to die.

One instance of this would be the children of Israel who had been in bondage and slavery for four hundred years. God wanted to set them free. God raised up Moses. Moses went and stood before the Pharaoh and told him, “Let my people go!” By signs and wonders and miracles, God delivered the children of Israel. The Red Sea parted and they came out of their bondage. They were set free by the glory of God. But you also remember for forty years they wandered in the wilderness. God’s intention was never simply that they be set free from their bondage. God’s intention was that they should go back into the land that He had promised them. Of course we are told in the book of Hebrews that they “entered not in because of disobedience” (Heb 3:18, 4:6) and due to a hardened heart of unbelief (Heb 3:19). For forty years they wandered in the wilderness until an entire generation, representing the unbelieving generation, died off. This is refered to as well in 1 Corinthians chapter ten, of those who had to die off before a new generation could rise up in faith and go in and take the land.

So it was with Uzziah. It was only after his death that Isaiah had a vision of God and His glory. Let us examine the Scriptures under the enlightenment of the Spirit to gives us a little glimpse and indication of who Uzziah was and why he had to die before the glory of God came back to God’s people. 2 Chronicles 26:1-5 reads,

"Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. He built Eloth, and restored it to Judah, after that the king slept with his fathers. Sixteen years old was Uzziah when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name also was Jecoliah of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah did. And he sought God in the days of Zechariah who had understanding in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper.”

Notice that in verse one and in verse three the Bible says that Uzziah was sixteen years old when he was made king. How could a sixteen-year-old rule and reign as king? He had the responsibility of the kingdom. He was the person with responsibility for well-being and safety of the people, for the justice system, and for the economy. Uzziah knew nothing about justice; he knew nothing about legal matters; he knew nothing about the economy; he knew little, if any, about the welfare of the people or the art of warfare. Yet he had the responsibility for all the people. How would a sixteen-year-old boy handle such responsibility? The Bible gives us a clear answer to this question. The Bible says, "...and he sought God in the days of Zechariah... as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper” (verse 5).

Uzziah didn’t know much, but he knew God. He didn’t have a lot of education, exposure, or experience, but he knew the Wisest One in the universe Who has all understanding. The Bible says he sought the face of God, and as long as he sought the face of God, God blessed him. God gave him success. God anointed and used him. Uzziah was a man of prayer. Prayer was a priority in the early years of his life. As I mentioned several times before, true prayer from our heart is an indication that we place our entire trust, dependence, or faith in God.

Another good example in the Bible of someone needing to die before God shown forth His glory is found in John chapter eleven. We are all familiar with the story of how Lazarus was sick and closed to dying. Yet when our Lord Jesus heard the news, He delayed for four days waiting for Lazarus to die before coming to his house. We are told that Jesus loves Lazarus very much (Jn 11:5), then why did He delay in coming to his aid? It was for the purpose of bringing greater glory to God as the Lord Jesus mentioned Himself (Jn 11:4). Furthermore, what the Lord is interested even more is that we ourselves would “see the glory of God” (Jn 11:40). Please note there is a subtle difference between doing things for the glory of God and we ourselves seeing the glory of God. It is beholding and seeing the glory of God that changes us and other people. That is the big difference. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us that by beholding the Lord, we are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”

I am convinced that prayer with faith and spending time in prayer just to behold the Lord is not the only thing, but it is the first thing we need to attend to, if we’re going to have revival in our day. If we’re going to see the Church be what the Church ought to be, it’s not going to come by our might, our strength, our ability--but it’s going to come as we seek the face of God. That was exactly what king Uzziah did and God poured out His blessings and His glory was shown abundantly.

I am convinced that the churches and the overall condition in America is needier than probably any other church in the world. We are desperately in need of God, but we are like that Laodicean Church (Rev 3:14-22). We say, I am clothed with riches; I have lots of things.... But go into the average church in America and you’ll find people who are hurting; you’ll find people in desperate situations; most of all, they seemed to be destitute of the Spirit and the Truth of God's Word rather than the pillar and base of the Truth. Families are being ripped apart. Our lives are being legally murdered by abortion; our young people are being brain-washed with demonic heavy metal music and their lives destroyed by drugs. It’s not just outside the church; it’s inside many churches. To be blind like the Laodicean church is to think that we are rich, when in fact we are desperately poor spiritually and not know it. I believe it is going to take the kind of praying in America with tears flowing from our face to the throne of God. God bottles up those tears, and as those tears are bottled up, one day He will release His glory.

We’ve filled ourselves with a routine church meeting schedule and conferences to give the false semblance that we are well with our church. Instead of living the life of a living sacrifice of one who is truly consecrated to God alone and His purpose, we’ve made ourselves so comfortable with these church routines to ease the guilt in our conscience and to somewhat ease the pain and the groaning of the Spirit of God within us. But we’re desperately hurting.

We can pull off some things that are just good enough to satisfy everybody and give us a little temporary fix. Then when we get a temporary fix, we don’t think we need God. That’s why we don’t the need for desperate prayer. Prayer is the outward expression of a heart that says, "O Lord my God, I am nothing, I have nothing and I can do nothing for Your glory and for Your eternal plan. I need You! Apart from You I can truly do nothing!" Where you find a people who is not filled with desperate prayers like this, it is because we don’t really feel that we are poor in spirit and that we need the Lord desperately. We think we can do it ourselves by our conferences and our evangelistic meetings and our other programs. We’ve had all the ways to manipulate people. We’ve all learned the techniques to "draw the net." In the human flesh we’ve done much to try to bring people into the Kingdom of God, and it’s not been a work of God. I had a great lesson to learn and it took me many years to learn that lesson. But now in our meetings I pray, "O God, I pray that it would be You. If it’s not You, I don’t want to be a part of it. Let it be you!" We have be experts in planning, programming, organizing and meeting, and we know how to put it all together humanly. But fruits of our labor speak for itself, because the lives of the people are not being transformed. We’ve got to desperately say, "O Lord, I need You! Lord, reveal more of Your glory to us that we may be enlighten to see how we have strayed, how far we are still from your standard of glory, and how much more we need to be transformed!"

Uzziah, a sixteen-year-old boy, didn’t know how to reign in the kingdom. He didn’t know what to do. But he had sense to know this: "I need God! I can’t do this alone. I need God!" The Church of God is built not by might; nor by power, but by the Spirit of God (Zach 4:6). it’s not by the eloquence of a man’s speech; it’s by the Spirit of the Lord. God moves, and God works as He finds His people who is truly leaning on Him entirely in faithful prayer.

Success in the eyes of God is not how many people we have in the conferences or in having the conferences at all. I'm not saying that there is no place for these things, but I'm afraid that they have just become a routine exercise for most of us which would have little, if any, benefits in building the Church and in advacing the kingdom of God. On a personal level, success in the eyes of God is simply, have we been obedient to Him? The negative examples of the children of Israel are those who were disobedient to Him as we saw in Hebrews (Heb 3:18, 4:6, 11). Obedience implies knowing and hearing the Word of the Lord and walk accordingly in His grace and empowering. The early Church obeyed the Word of the Lord in Luke, chapter 24. They began that Church in a prayer meeting. The Church in the New Testament was birthed in by a group of people dedicated to earnest prayers. And we saw in the book of Acts that the Church was also sustained and growned through much prayer. If we’re going to have revival in this country, it’s going to be birthed in the hearts of desperately praying people. We must be a people of prayer, afterall the Lord calls the Church, a “House of Prayer.” May we all seek to be such dedicated people of prayer that we may behold the glory of God and bring in the kingdom of God for the furtherance of His glory on this earth.