seeing God

“I will give thanks with my whole heart...”

Psalm 9:1a

In the quiet place, perched on a mountain top, it is easy to see God and experience God and embrace all that God is. It is when I pack up my things and head back into the valley called daily life that things can get muddled and my heart can grow weary. I long to see Him in the dailyness of life, hence the sole purpose of this blog--seeing and embracing and glorifying God in all things and at all times recognizing that He is present in all things at all times. 

Knowing this is not enough. I must recognize this and cherish this. When I do, and only when I do, will God be truly glorified through my life. Only when God is glorified through me will life have purpose and lasting meaning. 

It is easy to divide life into two categories: sacred and secular. 

We have holy days by which we dress in our best and go to a place of worship. 

We have holy acts and by doing them, we walk away with some pious feeling of achievement, feeling as though we can ‘cross it off of our list of things to do today’. 

We pray. 

We attend. 

We read. 

And then, after we do those things, we go on living our daily lives. 

Does this glorify God? 

Is God satisfied being merely a small part of the big picture we call life? 

I think not...absolutely not. 

I firmly believe, as is true in my own life, that God will continue to allow the earthly dailyness of life to wear us down, rob us of fulfillment and joy, until we come to Him, possessing nothing but weariness and anxiety. 

It is not until that place, the place of complete surrender that we will begin to see that within Him, everything has meaning. The disease. The unfair boss. Money. Hunger. Success. Failure. 

The question is not whether or not God is present but whether or not we see Him there. 

David writes that he will give thanks with his whole heart--everything he is, everything he does, will be a cry of gratitude to the Creator that sustains him, empowers him...lives in Him. 

Taking hold of this truth, the nose-wiping, Sesame St. watching mother, can take joy in her work, knowing that God is manifest there and is glorified in her as she loves her children and cleans the bottoms and feeds their bellies. 

Taking hold of this truth, the nine-to-five, blue collared man working for an unfair boss in a world of corruption and politics, can take great joy in knowing that God is honored through his hard work and integrity in the dailyness of life. This empowers him to do his job well, knowing that is not men he is serving, but rather God (Colossians 3:23). For through doing his job well, he unknowingly points others toward God as the evidences of grace shine in bright contrast to the joy-stealing spirit of darkness that permeates corporate America. 

This is a great ideal, but impossible on our own. Christ is very clear in John 15, that unless we walk in close relationship with Him and His Word is always churning away within our souls, we can do nothing...nothing of lasting value anyway. We will continue to be slaves to what is yet to come and miss completely the blessing of what is. 

Apart from the fellowship of Christ, the dailyness of life is nothing more than just that: dailyness. 

But

when I take Christ as His Word, and begin to walk with Him (John 15), my eyes will be opened to see how He is indeed present in every act of life: sex and relationships, work and play, finances and possessions. These will no longer be a burden or a shame or vain self-serving elements, but rather a joy as His presence gives these things eternal purpose. As the eyes of our hearts begin to see God in these earthly things, they are taken down as idols and instead become the things that spur on our praise to the One from whom these things come (Colossians 1:16, 17). 

Seeing God in all things frees us from the captivity to these things. Seeing God in all things reserves the affections of our hearts for Him--the One from whom these temporary things come. 

Rather than worshipping the created, our hearts bow to the Creator. It is in this place and only this place, that we find freedom and can truly enjoy the created and bring glory to the Creator. 

<><tce