Seeing the Unseen

Recently I was talking to someone about their life and about the presence of God in their life. During that conversation something came up that I have heard many other people say. Many people have a hard time believing in something that they cannot see, something that they cannot hold in their hands and examine.

In some ways this objections is obviously flawed. We all believe in things we cannot see, we believe in air, the wind, love, courage, anger and many other things that we cannot directly see, we can only see or feel the results of these things. In another way this objection is different. We can feel the wind on our face, we have felt love and anger in our hearts but how is it that we feel God. This is the place where faith comes in and it always has.

It is not blind faith, faith with nothing to compare to or nothing to base it on. We have the actions and the words of others to base our faith on. It is the same way we learn about love, before you feel love for the first time you have only what you have seen, what your parents or some other person has shown you, you can see the results of love but you have yet to experience it for yourself.

If you refused to believe that love exists because you have never yet experienced it then you would probably never take a chance on love, even if someone dared to love you, if you refused to believe love existed you would not love them back. Love that is not returned is not fully love, it is not the same as true love and so you would not have experienced love at all and it would confirm your suspicion that love did not exist. So you would live your life in a loveless world even though love was all around you.

Others might try to show you or convince you, others would experience love and see the truth of it so plainly that it would seem obvious to everyone but you would not believe, and so you would live in a loveless world.

We might think this was new but it has been the same since the days when Jesus walked the earth.

John 14:7–15 NASB95

“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

The disciples themselves desired to see God. They had a similar problem to many people today. They had heard about God, they had seen God’s creation, they had lived with God all around them but they felt like they could deepen their faith and their believe if they could just see God with their eyes and touch him with their hands. They longed for physical evidence of the reality of God. Even the disciples, the ones who spread God’s word and built God’s church, the ones who lived with Jesus and walked with him, sat under his teaching and drank in his words longed to see God.

Jesus told them, if you have seen me you have seen God the father, God is in me and I am in him you have seen God. If you don’t believe my words believe in what you have seen, believe in the works that I have done, see God the father through the works of God the son because we are in each other, if you have seen one of us you have seen both of us.

John 14:16–23 NASB95

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.

Now it may not be hard for us to see that Jesus and God are one, that God is in Jesus and Jesus is in God. We have the advantage of time and distance. We have been taught to think of God and Jesus as one in the same but before you pass this idea by let us examine it from our perspective.

Jesus said that he and God would send a helper, one who would live in us like God lives in Jesus. This helper is the holy spirit. The third member of the three part God, one who is just as much in God and in Jesus and they in him as God and Jesus are in each other. In fact immediately after Jesus says he is going to go be with the father and send the spirit to us he says that he will not leave us orphans but he will come to us. Jesus considers sending the spirit to us the same as coming to us himself.

And where is this spirit supposed to go, he is to live in us. Just as Jesus has said the father is in him and he is in the father, just as Jesus has said that if the spirit comes to you Jesus comes to you, If you have seen Jesus you have seen the father, if you have the spirit then you have Jesus, The spirit is in you and the spirit and Jesus are the same so Jesus is in you. If Jesus and God are in each other and Jesus is in you then God is in you.

In fact Jesus makes a strange statement. He says that in a little while the world will no longer see Him but you will see him because he lives in you also. Then he says that in that day you will know that Jesus is in the father and and you are in Jesus and Jesus is in you.

It is after Jesus physically leaves the world and the world can no longer see him that you will have the proof, that you will know that Jesus is in God and both Jesus and God are in you.

Who is it who will see all these things, Jesus says it is the one who keeps his commandments who loves Jesus, and that the one who loves Jesus will be loved by the Father, and this same one Jesus will love and disclose himself to them. In other words the one who does what Jesus says to do will be the one who Jesus shows himself to.

Even back in the days of the disciples, even back when Jesus walked the earth as a man it was the same. Jesus loved us first, he reached out to us first, but we cannot really know and experience his love until we decide to love him.

It works the same with human love. If someone loves you what you see are the actions they perform. We say a parent loves a child because they care for the child and meet the needs of the child. As the child grows and develops we say that the child loves the parents because they are grateful and they want to help and do good things for their parents. One the primary ways a child shows love for their parents is through respecting them and listening to them. The parents have much to teach the child and while it is the parents job to teach it is the child’s job to learn. If a child does not listen to their parents and ignores their parents we say the child is ungrateful and does not show love toward their parents. God has much to show us and to teach us and he shows his love by caring for us and we show our love by respecting him and listening to him, obeying his commands.

If a man loves a woman he wants to do things for her, to protect her from harm and to make her smile. If the woman only takes what he gives and gives nothing in return we say she is using him and she does not love him. If a woman loves a man she wants to make him happy and to help him in whatever he does, if the man only takes from her and does not do anything for her we say that he is selfish and does not love her.

If love is one sided it is not really love. That does not mean that the one who loves in not loving or does not love, in fact that is what God says, that he loved us before we ever loved him. But if love is one sided then it is not as full and not as complete as true love. Just as child who refuses to love a parent cannot experience the full benefit of a parents love, just as a man or woman who is loved and refuses to return that love cannot have the same type of relationship as a couple who love each other, the same is true of us and God.

No matter how much God loves us and no matter how perfect his love is, If we do not love him back we can never experience the full benefits of being loved by God and we can never experience the benefits of loving God ourselves.

When you love someone their very presence makes your day better. When you love someone you want to be around them, their happiness in contagious. When good things happen to them it is almost like they happened to you. When bad things happen it somehow makes it less terrible to have those you love around you, showing that they care. These and many other benefits of love are only felt once you love someone else.

If someone loves you but you could care less about them then when something good happens to them you don’t care, so you get no joy from their happiness, only from your own. When someone loves you but you could care less about them they can’t share your sorrow the way someone you love can because you won’t let them. When love is one sided it is not truly love. so many of the benefits of love only take place when both sides love each other.

It is the same with God and it has always been so. God loves you, He loves you completely and perfectly. Because he loves you he made this world for you and he sends rain and food and many good things from his creation for your use. If you never love him back all of this is there for you to use just because he loves you. God offers you peace and love and purpose and completeness and thousands of other benefits. The problem is that if you never love him back you can never receive all of those things they have for you.

God has taken the first step. He has loved us first. Not only that but God has sent those who have already chosen to love him back to love those whom he loves. We see the actions of love from other people. The proof of God’s love for us in his creation, in the world he made for us. It is also in the love of God’s people for each other and for everyone who God loves, and that means everyone everywhere.

But here is the thing, and it has always been the thing. God loves us first, he shows his love for us first, he sends others who already love him to show love to us, God surrounds us with love and compassion but until we decide to return his love we can never experience all that he has for us. Until we step out in faith to love him back we will never know what love is really like. Not because God is keeping something from us, not because God is holding something back until we do what he wants, just because that is how love works. You just can’t experience all that love has to offer until you decide to love too. You can’t get all there is to get out of a loving relationship by choosing not to love.

Its so easy, all you have to do is follow God’s example, follow the example of the ones that he sends into your life, all you have to do is love him back and the world opens up to you in a way it never could before, because now you know love, and you are in love.

By the way if you already love God then you are one of the ones he sends to show his love to a world that desperately needs it, how are you doing in that?