THE WAY OF THE KING
A Heart That Sees God
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt. 5:8).
Your God-lifed heart has the ability to
• show great mercy,
• see great value,
• extend extreme forgiveness,
• believe for the impossible,
• endure the unbearable,
• love the unlovable,
• to fellowship God,
• to touch with tenderness,
• to respond with gentleness,
• to pray unceasingly, and
• to see God.
Unfortunately, for many of us, our hearts are buried under unforgiveness, bitterness, doubt, disappointment, double-mindedness, fear, and other debris life has dumped on us.
Our failure to “see God” is not a matter of His invisibility or unavailability . In most cases it is merely a matter of focus. We tend to make self and problems bigger, and take them closer than God. A small dime, when drawn close to the eye, can blot out the sun. Likewise, tiny problems can blind us to the presence, power, promises and provisions of God.
Our natural man tends to nurture fear and starve faith.
• It cultivates and encourages doubt while discouraging hope.
• It believes the worst.
• It waxes eloquent in explaining away the mystery of the miraculous.
• It allows unanswered questions to keep us from enjoying what we do know.
• It blinds us.
All four of the Gospels tell the story of Jesus feeding the five-thousand, but John tells it this way:
6:2 …a huge crowd kept following him wherever he went, because they saw his miracles as he healed the sick. 3 Then Jesus went up into the hills and sat down with his disciples around him. 4 (It was nearly time for the annual Passover celebration.) 5 Jesus soon saw a great crowd of people climbing the hill, looking for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, "Philip, where can we buy bread to feed all these people?" 6 He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip replied, "It would take a small fortune to feed them!" 8 Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. 9 "There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?" 10 "Tell everyone to sit down," Jesus ordered. So all of them -- the men alone numbered five thousand -- sat down on the grassy slopes. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and passed them out to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate until they were full. 12 "Now gather the leftovers," Jesus told his disciples, "so that nothing is wasted." 13 There were only five barley loaves to start with, but twelve baskets were filled with the pieces of bread the people did not eat! (John 6:2-13, NLT)
When confronted with Jesus’ intention to feed the multitude, the disciples selfishly focused on what they could not do and what they did not have. They limited the situation to themselves. In contrast, Jesus, before any bread was broken, already knew what He was going to do. He prepared the people to receive an unseen out-of-hand provision sufficient enough to satisfy the hunger of the entire multitude. Jesus saw what the disciples did not see.
I say, do you see God?
An impure heart tends to focus on
• adversity and
• adversaries and
• lack and
• inabilities and
• past sins and
• a thousand reasons why it can’t happen,
while the pure heart is able to see God even in the midst of the most difficult situations.
We may not see things as clearly as Jesus did, but we can see enough to dispel fear, doubt and despair. We may not know how God is going to meet the need, but we can know that God will meet the need.
I say, do you see God’s provision?
The Emmaus Road travelers did not realize that their traveling companion was the resurrected Christ, but upon reflection they said, “Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way…?” (Luke 24:32). Although they failed to perceive the identity of their traveling companion, either intellectually or physically, their spirit was warmed by His words. If they had given place to their burning hearts, they would have realized who the speaker was.
Like them, our heart can perceive God, even when our natural senses are unaware of His nearness.
I say, do you have a burning heart?
The Psalmist David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim His craftsmanship” (Ps. 19:1). Paul pressed this idea when he wrote: “…since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what had been made, so that people have no excuse for denying God” (Ro. 1:20, TNIV).
Allow me to paraphrase those verses into one thought.
“The distant night sky with its numberless stars and shinning moon declares the immeasurable glory of its Creator. The blue sky that turns to gold with the setting sun whispers the awesomeness of the One who crafted it. Ever since God spoke it all into existence it has not ceased to make visible God’s invisible power and attributes, thus giving man evidence that God is and that God is more awesome than what He made and eliminating any justification for man’s denial of God.”
Scripture speaks of people who hear, but fail to believe what they hear. We might equally speak of those who see, but fail to be smitten with what they see. Although God is exhibiting his power and majesty, all they see is a sunset.
When Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” the term He used for “see ” refers to something more than mere voluntary observation and casual vision. It refers to an earnest wide-eyed inspection of something that is awesome and into which we are drawn with great wonder. It is what one might call a worshipful stare.
In his book “Dangerous Wonder,” Michael Yaconelli observed:
“The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment.”
The clutter that covers our spirit has resulted in a
• drab,
• dreary,
• lifeless,
• dry,
• crusty,
• flat,
• flaky,
• insipid,
• stale,
• dingy,
• monotonous,
• gloom filled,
• boring,
• stingy,
• sad,
• hopeless and
• colorless form of Christianity.
The problem isn’t that God is invisible or inaudible, but that we have been blinded and deafened.
We have allowed life and religion to define God, so that when He speaks we do not recognize Him. This Living God beckoning us does not resemble our golden calf.
We are so busy with life that we don’t even notice the burning bush, much less hear the Voice that tells us we are on holy ground.
We can’t hear the shout of creation, the Voice that speaks out of the events of life or the Whisperer within.
We are blind to the wonder of the seagull that seems suspended in midair. We barely give a golden sunset a glance, much less stare at it in worshipful wonder.
As children lying on our backs in clover filled fields we were able to find faces and animals in the clouds—“Look there is a boat and there a bear and there is butterfly…and on we went”. We were awe struck by the varied colors on a butterfly’s wing or the strength of a rhinoceros beetle or the beauty and speed of a humming bird. Nature screamed the glory of God and we were a box of questions.
Now, we listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of a culture that values financial security over the insecurity of following Christ—a culture that is six-feet deep in pleasure and techno toys and worry and doubt and debt and schedules and bills, but blind to the awesomeness of God.
We are so caught up in the temporal that we cannot see the Eternal.
I say, are you able to see God?
Joseph was able to see God from a prison cell. He realized that what his brothers had meant for evil, God meant for good. If Joseph had looked at his brothers through circumstantially imposed bitterness and unforgiveness, then he would have used his high position in Egypt to exact revenge—he would have killed them. Instead, a pure heart enabled Joseph to see past the circumstances and through the malicious actions of his brothers, and to see the purpose of God in the midst of his affliction and adversity. His pure heart never allowed him to become the owner of the problem, but enabled him to remain the steward of the promise.
How about you? Have you taken ownership of the problem? Are you the possessor the promise? Do you talk more about how bad your situation is or about how BIG GOD is? Do you major on “your problem”…or on God’s faithfulness?
I say, are you able to see God?
CONCLUSION
Are you able to look at a little boy’s lunch and see enough to feed a multitude? More specifically, are you able to look at your meager resources and yet joyfully respond to God’s directive to give what you have and yet know that He will meet your need?
Are you able to look at a rebellious teenager and see a pastor?
Do you have the ability to look at your situation and see God’s purpose in spite of the problems?
Have the pits, Potiphars and prisons left you embittered and vengeful?
Have selfishly prayed prayers that have gone unanswered left you disappointed with God and caused you to give into a pale, pessimistic, faithless existence?
This past week, during VBS, I watched as adults became children and stepped into a world in which mystery and awe are common place. They topped their heads with wild looking wigs and goofy hats, and they sported plastic teeth that begged for dental attention. For a moment they were doctors and spies and pioneers and comedians and old women with large backfields in motion. They told stories about the largeness of God to wide-eyed kids. They journeyed into a world where wide-eyed wonder is the norm and they enjoyed every moment of it. This past Friday night they poured their all into a 45 minute commencement exercise and left fatigued, but joyfully fulfilled.
What if the gloriously great God described in last week’s VBS really does exist?
What affect would it have on your world if you let go of bitterness and fear and unforgiveness and doubt and all of the other debris that clouds your vision and dulls your hearing?
What might happen if we liberated our spirit from the junk that we’ve accumulated over the years? The things that make up the dung heap covering your spirit.
• The anger prompted by memories of the marriage that ended in divorce.
• The disappointment of a child that rejected your teaching and training, and gave into a life of drugs and depraved behavior.
• The shame of a foolish decision.
• The fearful uncertainty produced by deteriorating income and increasing prices.
• The grief of some lost opportunity now forever gone.
• The anxiety brought on by the affects of aging or declining health.
• The discouragement of being abandoned by Christian friends when you needed them most.
• The pain of being misunderstood and maliciously misrepresented.
• The inhibitions fostered on us by our belief that we can’t be ourselves and be valuable and likable.
What if He became your Father…for real…and you lived to be His child?
• What if we let go and let God be God, not only on Sunday morning, but every day of every week of every month of every year…forever?
• What if we began to trust Him unconditionally and completely?
• What if we unburdened ourselves of all the things that we can’t do anything about?
• What if we started paying attention to the burning bushes?
• What if we became worshipful gazers?
• What if we started staring at God in all His awesome glory?
• What if we gave into the tinge of joy we feel right now and quit trying to explain it away?
• What if we made room for mystery…for unanswered questions?
• What if we gave fuel to the embers of faith that smolder within us and denied unbelief any place in our mind or heart?
What if we started looking for God in everything—the good, the bad, the problems, the glorious, the well-watered places, the dry deserts, yesterday, tomorrow?
I say, can you see God?
If not now, then when?
If not, then what will it take and are you willing to take that step?
PRAYER
God, purify my heart so that I can see you! Excavate my heart! Dig it out from under all the debris! Help me do what it takes to see the burning bushes and to hear your voice. Help me see You!
--
1. “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
2. Strong’s Greek Dictionary, #3700, (optanomai, op-tan’-om-ahee), a (middle voice) prolonged form of the primary (middle voice) optomai op’-tom-ahee; which is used for it in certain tenses; and both as alternate of oraw - horao 3708 to gaze (i.e. with wide-open eyes, as at something remarkable; and thus differing from blepw - blepo 991, which denotes simply voluntary observation; and from eidw - eido 1492, which expresses merely mechanical, passive or casual vision; while qeaomai - theaomai 2300, and still more emphatically its intensive qewrew - theoreo 2334, signifies an earnest but more continued inspection; and skopew - skopeo 4648 a watching from a distance):--appear, look, see, shew self. (Source: http://www.htmlbible.com/sacrednamebiblecom/kjvstrongs/STRGRK36.htm#S3700.)
3. Yaconelli, Michael, Dangerous Wonder, p.23.
© 2007, by Louis Bartet, all rights reserved.
