My father-in-law wrote a great reply to my last devotion. I thought you all might be interested in reading it as well!
God Bless,
Ashley
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People can see the evidence that God exists everyday in His creation. – if they want to. Psalms 19:1 says, “The Heavens declare the Glory of God; and the firmament [the stars] shows His handiwork.” So how can you miss God in all that? But His handiwork, just like all of His more sensational and spectacular miracles in the Bible, still get missed or forgotten by people who also still fail to notice Him and fail to continue to give Him credit. They just forget and fall back into their unbelief and let life go on “as usual” without God and without faith. Sure, we’re all humans, and you can expect that sort of thing, but thank God He created faith as a plan for those if us who want to remember Him and all He has done!
I believe the real reason we humans forget about God is because no one ever truly sees God and keeps on living. We just see His actions, His work and His results, but never His face. Moses was told by God that "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." (Ex 33:20). So Moses got to see the back of God for just an instant, and that almost killed him! We only get to see the evidence of God’s existence, and that where faith (and often a lot of it) is required for us to believe that the evidence means that God truly exists. The works, wonders, and miracles are all only signs & representations of who God is, but we never really get to see God Himself – because if we saw Him, we would surely die.
I also believe that it would be impossible to see God and still not believe in Him. Good or bad, once you see Him you’ll believe alright, but then it’s too late to do anything about it because you’ll also be dead, and all that’s left then is The Judgment. There’s no gap or time to decide to follow Christ or to correct your crooked path or clean your soiled garments. The instant a human see God – truly and really sees God – life as we know it is over.
This leads me to the list of my three good reasons why God doesn’t actually show Himself to people directly:
1) It eliminates the faith required to believe (aka, “seeing is believing”)
2) it eliminates the ability for people to act on that belief (too late to change; and
3) it eliminates the ability to share that faith and spread it to others.
So again, God in His grace knew we couldn’t actually see Him or this whole plan wouldn’t work right. I’d love to actually see God face to face today because I know I’m ready to meet Him. That doesn’t scare me at all. But if I did see Him right now face to face, I wouldn’t be able to stay here and share my faith with others who don’t know Him and that would not be good for His Master Plan – The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). So as long as I’m part of His plan here on Earth, I’ve got to use faith to keep me in tune with God.
The only exception in the Bible are those people who saw the physical human body and face of Jesus himself. Even then, however, the disciples only saw the physical Christ and never the fully incarnated glorious heavenly Christ. God limited what they saw to what they could understand and endure without zapping them all into heaven in an instant. He needed to energize them to start the church, but He didn’t want to wipe them out before they got started. Maybe that’s why the first generation of the church was so empowered and so spiritual – they saw more of God than any other living man, but yet they continued to live here on earth. That extra dose of God – seeing Christ in His resurrected body – had to be awesome to say the least.
The point of all this is to say that God created faith and gave it to us for us to “see” God in this world and in all of the miracles our human eyes might view. Faith is the “eye-glass of the soul” and God’s primary tool to get man back into fellowship with Him. He still reveals Himself through miracles and acts of healing and the like, and man will continue to get all excited at times and then forget Him at other times. But these things are provided to remind mankind of the faith that we all need to have in Him in order to believe that He truly exists. Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without Faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
Without faith, we may see evidence of God all around us, but never truly see Him as our Lord & Savior. But with faith, our eyes will be opened more and more to see and appreciate all of His wondrous works and His desire to be Our Awesome God!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
How Often Do You "See" God?
Many people wonder why God doesn't just "show himself to the world" so that we may all see and believe. Well, anyone who continues to ask that, does not fully understand or know the bible. Time after time in the Old Testament, God revealed himself to the people. There were miracles, prophecies, parting of rivers, the 10 commandments, military victories, tornadoes of fire, etc. Unfortunately, after every event, God's people forgot what He had done. They turned back to their old ways and began worshiping/creating false gods.
Even after Jesus walked on this Earth raising people from the dead, healing the blind and sick, feeding thousands of people out of just a few loaves of bread, walking on water, and turning water into wine his disciples almost immediately threw all of the physical evidences of God (along with all his words and predictions to his death) away.
Luke 24 depicts the scene of two of Jesus' disciples meeting Jesus on the road after the resurrection. One would think these disciples would remember God's words (and recognize Jesus) especially after all they had witnessed:
". . . the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him mover to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life" (Matthew 20:17-19)
Jesus said the above words directly to his 12 apostles. Yet as these 2 men were walking along the road, they assumed Jesus was a visitor to Jerusalem. They spoke to him about the man who was crucified, a great prophet, the one they thought would "redeem Israel."
How could these men not know Jesus? They were the ones who knew him the most while on this Earth yet they STILL had to have Jesus(disguised as a visitor) explain to them why He(Jesus) was the Christ! It says that Jesus explained the Scripture to them and all it had said regarding the Christ: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (Luke 24:27)
So ask yourself, why do you need God to reveal himself to you? What good would it do? Would you honestly change your life and live it better? Would you forget it? Would you go and tell others? Would other people even believe you? This is why (if you remember my devotion about Elijah on the mountain), God does not want to have to show himself to us in a BIG way. He would much rather be that whisper, that intimate, close relationship that only we can explain. This is why God is so special. And don't forget, you never know how often you are actually interacting with God. Look at the disciples, they did not even know they were speaking with Jesus on the road! How often do we encounter Him in our lives and dismiss Him?
God Bless you all,
Ashley
"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint."
Isaiah 40:31
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