Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down … to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! Isaiah 64:1-2
God’s name is a way of speaking about his character. So when Isaiah prays that God would “come down … to make your name known,” it means, “come down and let us know who you really are.”
Isaiah wants even God’s enemies to know him: “make your name known to your adversaries” (64:2). But God’s name becomes known to his adversaries when it is known to his friends. That’s why revival is first an intensification of God’s presence among his people.
So what does it mean to ask God to “come down and make your name known”? One example is that it means asking God to “come down and make your love known.” God is love. We believe in God, and yet some of us do not feel that he loves us. You believe in Christ, and yet somehow you assume God is frowning on you or at best tolerating you.
Even in the early church, Paul prayed that Christians would know the love of Christ: “that you … may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17-19).
Paul was praying Isaiah’s prayer! “Lord, come down and make your name known. Bring your people into a felt experience of your love.”
Would you take a moment to pray that God would make his name and his love known to you and those around you on a deeper level?
