Loving Our Invisible God
It seems it would
be so much easier to believe how much we are loved by God and to love Him back
if we could actually see Him, look into His eyes and feels His arms around
us. Colossians 1:15, speaking of Christ, says: He is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn over all creation. Jesus Christ is the closest we are
able to come to seeing God.
It may frustrate us to some degree that God is invisible, but He is invisible
only to protect us. We could not see Him and live. Moses came the closest to
seeing God with his own eyes and he was protected in the cleft of a rock and
could only see the back of God as He passed by. We are not able in our sinful
human bodies to see God. It is for our sake that he remains invisible. He wants
to make Himself visible to us, but there are some parts of him that must remain
invisible for our lifetimes on earth.
Moses understood this. He embraced God and His commandments though he, like us,
did not always understand the reason clearly. He knew there are secret things
that belong only to God. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things
belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children
forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”
In loving our invisible God, we must embrace the things that He has made visible
to us and welcome the secrets He reveals to us about Himself and our relationship
with Him. He made Himself most visible in sending Christ to us. You’ve
got to look at the way He did that. He had His Son—a very aspect of Himself—take
on human form and be born of a woman. All along throughout the Old Testament
He made Himself visible. He led the children of Israel as a pillar of cloud by
day and a pillar of fire by night. There were special times when His glory so
filled the tabernacle that the priests could not move for the force of pressure
there. He made Himself visible by describing His Father’s heart for us
in His Word. But we can see Him best by examining the life of Christ and learning
the extreme love He has for us that He would allow His one and only Son to suffer
and die on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice for our sin. He did this so He
can become visible to us.
God won’t remain invisible forever. His heart is towards setting all the
wheels in motion so that He can become visible for eternity. Paul puts it this
way: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall
see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully
known” (1 Cor. 13:12). We must wait until we are ready to see God
for who He really is.
In the meantime, there are many ways that God has made Himself visible to us.
Let’s see if we can exhaust those ways before we ask for more. You can
know God as He has revealed Himself to you. Is He still invisible?
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