Here I Am · Study 5 of 5 · Keep going
This is the last part of a five-part study through Isaiah 6. Isaiah has seen God, seen himself and been cleansed. Now he hears a question and gives the answer this whole series is named after. Like the others, this study has three sections, and you can take them in one sitting or spread them over a few days:
- 📖 Study: walk through Isaiah 6:8–13 phrase by phrase, including the part most people skip.
- ✍️ Journal: honest questions with room to write.
- 🛠️ Practice: three small, specific “here I am” moments for your real day.
Have a Bible, a pen and something to write in. Go slowly.
🗺️ Where this study fits
Isaiah 6 is one encounter with God that changes a man in five moves. This is the last one, and it only makes sense because of the four before it.
Fear of the Lord
Holiness
Repentance
Forgiveness
Keep going
See God. See yourself. Confess. Be cleansed. Say yes, and keep saying it.
📱 The picture we’ll use: notifications
All through this series, your phone has been a picture of your heart, your control center, the place where choices get made (Proverbs 4:23). In this last study the picture is notifications.
Your phone buzzes all day, and without noticing it you’ve trained yourself on which ones get an answer. The group chat: instantly. Some app you forgot about: never. You answer the voices you care about.
In Isaiah 6:8 God asks a question and waits. Is His voice one you open, or one you swipe away?
📜 Read it slowly
Read the whole passage out loud once. Don’t stop at verse 8. Notice how the mood changes after the yes.
8 I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
9 He said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand. You see indeed, but don’t perceive.’ 10 Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, houses without man, the land becomes utterly waste, 12 and Yahweh has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many within the land. 13 If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed, as a terebinth, and as an oak whose stump remains when they are cut down, so the holy seed is its stump.”
Isaiah 6:8–13 (World English Bible)🧭 Step 1 · The yes comes last
Look at the order of the whole chapter one more time. Isaiah sees God (verses 1–4). He sees himself (verse 5). He’s cleansed (verses 6–7). Only then does he say yes (verse 8). The sending comes last.
That order protects us. If you say yes to God in order to become clean, you’re working for acceptance, and that kind of yes burns out. Isaiah’s yes isn’t effort to get to verse 7. It’s a response from verse 7. He’s already been told, “your iniquity is taken away.”
👂 Step 2 · For the first time, God speaks
“I heard the Lord’s voice.” Up to now the only voices in the scene belonged to the seraphim. Now, for the first time, Isaiah hears God Himself, and it comes right after his lips are cleansed. The man who said his mouth was unclean now has ears to hear and, in a moment, a mouth to answer.
The Hebrew word for voice here is qol, the same word that runs through the whole question of this series: whose voice has the final say? In verse 4 the doorposts shook at the voice of the seraph. In verse 8 the voice is God’s, and it’s a question.
❓ Step 3 · God asks instead of commanding
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God doesn’t point at Isaiah and order him. He puts a question into the room and waits for an answer. The King on the throne invites willing people.
Notice the “us.” Readers understand it in different ways. Many see God speaking with His heavenly court around Him, as in 1 Kings 22:19–22. Many Christians also hear a hint of the fuller picture of God the New Testament gives, like “let us make man” in Genesis 1:26. It’s wise not to build a doctrine on this one word. Either way, Isaiah is invited into something bigger than himself. God isn’t asking him to go alone. He’s asking him to go for us.
🗣️ Step 4 · Same mouth, new words
“Then I said.” Three small words. The same man who said “Woe is me!” in verse 5 speaks again in verse 8. Same voice, same lips. But now the lips are clean, and the words are completely different. That’s what forgiveness does: it changes what comes out of your mouth.
🙋 Step 5 · “Here I am”
In Hebrew this is one word: hinneni. It’s a word with a history. Listen to who else says it:
After these things, God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” He said, “Here I am.”
Genesis 22:1 (World English Bible)… God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.”
Exodus 3:4 (World English Bible)Yahweh called Samuel. He said, “Here I am.” … Then Samuel said, “Speak; for your servant hears.”
1 Samuel 3:4, 10 (World English Bible)Every time, it means the same thing: I’m present. I’m available. I’m listening. It isn’t “here’s my plan” or “here’s what I’m good at.” It’s just: here I am.
🚀 Step 6 · Send me, before the details
“Send me!” Isaiah volunteers before he knows the assignment. He doesn’t ask where, how long or how hard. That’s trust in the King he just saw. And as the next verses show, it’s a good thing he trusted, because the assignment was hard.
🌧️ Step 7 · The part most people skip
We usually stop at verse 8 and end on a big moment. Keep reading. God tells Isaiah to go and speak to people who will hear but not understand (verses 9–10). These are hard words. They don’t mean God was keeping willing hearts away from Him. They describe what happens when a people keep refusing: the same message that softens one heart hardens another, and God hands the stubborn over to the choice they keep making. The very wording, “lest they … turn again, and be healed,” shows what God has always wanted: turning and healing.
Isaiah’s response is the most honest prayer in the chapter: “Lord, how long?” (verse 11). The answer is sobering: until the cities are empty and the land is ruined (verses 11–12). And Isaiah kept going anyway. Isaiah 1:1 says he served through the reigns of four kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, a ministry of many decades.
Jesus quoted verses 9–10 to explain why so many people heard His parables and didn’t understand (Matthew 13:14–15). The pattern is the same: faithful messengers, slow-to-listen people, and a God who keeps working anyway.
🌱 Step 8 · The holy seed in the stump
The chapter doesn’t end in ruin. It ends with a tree cut down to a stump, and a single line of hope: “the holy seed is its stump.” A terebinth or an oak can look dead and still have life in its roots. God promises a remnant, a holy seed that survives the judgment.
Isaiah comes back to that picture later: “A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1), the promise of the coming King from David’s family line. Christians see that promise fulfilled in Jesus. The hope of Isaiah 6 isn’t that Isaiah would succeed. It’s that God would keep His promise.
👨👧 What keeps a holy life going
Theologians call this perseverance and ongoing sanctification: God keeps working in His people over a lifetime, and His people keep walking with Him. The real question is what fuels it. The New Testament’s answer is that you are His child.
For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Romans 8:15 (World English Bible)And because you are children, God sent out the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Galatians 4:6–7 (World English Bible)For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
Hebrews 12:10 (World English Bible)Slaves perform. Sons and daughters belong. Performance runs out of fuel; belonging doesn’t. That’s why a holy life lasts when it comes from being His child, not from trying hard. And notice Hebrews 12: holiness is something the Father shares with us, patiently, day after day. That’s family work, not a drill sergeant’s.
Holiness also lives in the unseen days. A boxer might fight only a few times a year. Everyone sees the fight, but it’s won in the hundreds of training days nobody films. Your quiet “here I am” in the morning, when nobody’s watching, is where a holy life gets built.
🚫 What this passage doesn’t say
- It doesn’t say “here I am” only means going overseas. Isaiah’s mission was to his own people.
- It doesn’t promise visible success. Verses 9–13 say the opposite.
- It doesn’t say the yes earns anything. It comes after the coal.
- It doesn’t say God gives up on people. Even judgment ends with a holy seed.
Find a quiet place. Write honestly; nobody else needs to read this. If one question hits hard, stay there instead of rushing on.
Big commitments are easy to make and hard to keep. Three small, specific ones are survivable. Pick one “here I am” for each part of your real day (not your ideal day) and check them off as you go.
- 🌅 When you wake up. One specific yes. Not “pray more,” but something you can actually do or miss, like “I say ‘here I am’ and read one chapter before I open any messages.”
- 💼 In the middle of your day (work, school or home). One specific yes. Not “be kinder,” but “I ask one person how they’re really doing, and listen.”
- 🚪 When you walk back in the door. One specific yes. Not “rest more,” but “I pause at the door and pray for the people inside before I walk in.”
- 👥 One person who knows. Tell someone your three yeses and set one check-in in the next week. A yes nobody hears tends to die quietly.
- 🔁 Keep short accounts. Before you sleep, take two minutes: confess anything specific, receive His forgiveness, release anyone you’re holding a debt against.
- 📲 Optional: put it where you’ll see it. Use the Here I Am rhythm builder to turn your three yeses into a lock screen.
- 📅 Review in a week. Did you keep them? Did your person ask? If you missed some, don’t quit. Adjust one and keep going. That’s the whole point.
📚 Go deeper
- Isaiah 6, start to finish: read it again now that you’ve walked through all of it.
- Genesis 22:1–14, Exodus 3:1–12, 1 Samuel 3:1–10: three more “here I am” moments.
- Isaiah 11:1–10: the shoot from the stump.
- Galatians 4:4–7 and Romans 8:14–17: no longer a slave, but a child and heir.
- Hebrews 12:1–11: running with perseverance, trained by a Father.
🗓️ The five studies
The thread under all five: God is my Father. I am His child. So, be holy as He is holy.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). Words in [brackets] are added to show who is speaking. Hebrew notes are simplified; for more depth see John Oswalt’s or Alec Motyer’s commentaries on Isaiah.