[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Good evening.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: It is a pleasure to be here with you all for Bible class. If you are a guest, we are especially glad that you have chosen to be with us tonight. For the past couple of weeks, our shepherds have been leading us through a series on connecting. And tonight, Vic Pratt will be leading our message tonight on connecting with a God who sees us. If you know Vic, you probably have already noticed this about him. But what I notice about Vic is every time I see him interacting with the church, I notice that he shows kindness with such ease and gentleness. And that's something that I really admire about Vic. Whenever I asked him about his favorite thing about the church, he said that my favorite thing about the church is how we choose to love and care for one another. Whenever I asked for a fun fact about Vic, he said, he said, whenever I was in college, I got to play with the Naval Academy drumline in President Ronald Reagan's inaugural gala. And that's pretty cool.
So, Vic, we are super thankful for you. We are super thankful for the time and the preparation that you have put into your message. And we are thankful for all of you to be here with Bible class with us. Let's continue in our worship tonight.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Those sentiments I'm really glad you guys are here tonight.
Thankful for the opportunity to share a message that's very near and dear to my heart. So I'll start with a rhetorical question.
Have you ever felt like you were invisible?
My guess is there are some here tonight who can honestly say, nah, I've never had that.
I cannot say that I go through life feeling like I must be invisible because there's no way this person does not see me or those people don't see me.
I was up in Milwaukee a couple of months ago and I decided to have some pasta for dinner. So I go to the restaurant. And the hostess tells me, okay, it's an hour wait. So as it turns out, it's a bad idea to go to a restaurant on the night before Mother's day without reservations.
But she does give me a workaround.
If you go up to the bar, they have the ability to serve you from the full menu there. I look over there, there's like, 20 seats. Maybe six or seven of them are full. I thought, perfect, I'll go up there and order, no problem. And then for the next 45 minutes, I tried to catch the eye of the bartender.
He never even got within 10ft of me, so I could even flag him down. And so I never, ever had an opportunity to order from the bar.
Now, some people might say, well, that's kind of like being cloaked. I mean, if you're a Harry Potter fan, right, they have the invisibility cloak. Or if you're a Star Trek fan, you have the ability, or the Klingons had the ability to cloak their vessels.
Problem is, I don't have any control over when I'm cloaked. And so my daughter and I joke about the fact that we must be cloaked.
Now, I am super proud of this congregation and how many people make such a great effort to welcome visitors and newcomers to our worship. But in the same way that there's no such thing as perfect people, there's no such thing as a perfect congregation. And so there might even be somebody here tonight who said, you know what? I thought I'd give Madison a try, but not a soul has even spoken to me tonight.
Sometimes we walk through life feeling like we're invisible.
Maybe not to the world, but perhaps we feel like we're invisible to God. We wonder if our prayers fall into silence, if our struggles go unnoticed, or if our hopes are just simply too minute for God to worry about.
Tonight we will begin with the story of Hagar, who was Abraham and Sarah's servant from the Old Testament. We will see that God sees Hagar, who most people might say he's a nobody.
God sees the one who was enslaved and oppressed.
God sees the one who has been assaulted.
God sees the one who runs away in despair and lives, ends up living in the street.
God sees the men and women in prison.
We have a lot of brothers in Christ over at Limestone Correctional.
Those fellows know a thing or two about being neglected, feeling like outcasts, people that society has completely abandoned.
God sees the families that have been torn apart by infidelity or selfishness or addiction. God sees the folks that live alone and want nothing more than somebody to come and visit them and be the highlight of their week. The folks we have that are shut ins or in nursing homes know a thing or two about that.
Tonight I want to talk about the reality of the fact that God sees all of us. None of us are invisible to God.
So we'll begin by looking at the Old Testament passage in which Hagar chooses a name for God.
So the context around this passage is that Abraham and Sarah were lagging in their faith that God would provide an heir through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
When Abraham was 75, God appeared to him in the city of Haran and said the following from Genesis 12. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and those who dishonor you, I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So the promise was made that he would have children when he was 75.
When he was 85, God appears to Abraham and promises that the heir would come from him and it would not be his servant Eleazar.
The next year, Sarah gives her handmaiden to Hagar to Abram to help God to meet his promise.
So let's look at that passage beginning in Genesis chapter 16, verse 4.
And he went into Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, may the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me.
But Abram said to Sarai, behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please.
Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said to Hagar, he said, hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai. The angel of the Lord said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her.
The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.
And the angel of the Lord said to Her. Behold, you are pregnant.
You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. And then verse 13 is what I wanted to key in on. So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her.
You are a God of seeing. For she said, truly, here I have seen him who looks after me. So that's the theme for tonight's class. You are the God who sees me.
So we'll come back to Hagar in a few moments. But for now, let's consider the idea that God sees each of us and sees us as individuals, and most importantly, he sees our individual struggles. It is pretty incredible to think about the vastness of the universe, the complexity of the physical laws of nature, the billions of people that live on this planet, all these things that vie for God's attention, and yet he cares about us individually. King David probably understood this more than anyone that we read about in the Bible.
In Psalm 83, we read, When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of man, that you care for him.
And if you do a quick Google search, or, I'm sorry, a Bible search, on the phrase who am I? We find five different times that David says that.
Once he says, who am I to marry the king's daughter? Talking to King Saul. The other four times he says, who am I? And who are this people, Lord, that you bless us. And this is one example, 1st Chronicles 17:6.
So none of us are worthy of God's attention. But that isn't even relevant. He sees us and loves us, despite our shortcomings and our unworthiness.
I also want to consider verse 11, though.
Yeah. God through his angel, specifically tells Hagar, I have heard your affliction.
Now, we don't know a great deal about Hagar. We know she was an Egyptian, and we know she was a servant. Don't know a whole lot more about her than that. We know that her country was polytheistic, Egypt was polytheistic. We know Abraham was a worshiper of the one true God.
One question I have is whether Hagar followed the religion of her homeland or did she maybe follow the religion of Abraham to some degree? The Holy Spirit didn't reveal that to us. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, that isn't really all that important.
What is significant to me though, is what we do know about her. We know that the angel of the Lord appeared to her in this instance and again later.
So why do I think it is so special and so significant that God appeared to Hagar?
Many of us like to root for the underdog. We often like to celebrate the rags to riches stories where somebody who really doesn't have a whole lot going for him ends up accomplishing some great thing.
Certainly in this story, Hagar is the underdog. So let's consider her for a moment. As mentioned a moment ago, it isn't clear that she had any particular faith in God.
We know that she taunted her mistress and showed contempt toward her when she became pregnant and her mistress could not.
That certainly is not an attitude that God approves of. We know that she was mistreated by Sarah and by extension her husband Abraham, who were very special people to God when they sent her away into the wilderness.
Sometimes people of faith really screw things up, despite the fact that Hagar did not appear to be much value to God's ultimate plan to raise up the Messiah through Abraham's lineage.
Despite that, we see that God cares for her and rescues her in the wilderness, and in fact he promises to bless her with a great nation, even though Ishmael will often be against the promised lineage of Abraham.
The same God who saw her in her wilderness sees us in ours.
He sees your heartaches, your questions, your quiet victories, and your hidden wounds.
You are not overlooked and you are not alone.
Now, clearly God does not swoop in and rescue us every time we get in trouble.
But it is also clear that God sees us in all of our circumstances.
I'm also reminded, as much as I hate to say it, that sometimes the people who give us the most difficulty or the people that hurt us the most are the people who claim to wear the name of God.
But again, God is the God who sees me.
He knows the struggles that I face.
He also knows when a brother or sister in Christ has hurt me and he has a stern warning talks about the fact that if someone were to negatively affect one of the little ones, it would be better if a millstone was tied around their neck and them to be cast in the sea. Paul echoes a similar sentiment when he says in Romans 14, don't put a stumbling block in front of one of your brothers and by so doing destroy the one for whom Christ has died.
Jesus also tells us how important our relationship is to one another when he tells us that if you're on your way to the temple to worship, and you realize there's something between you and your brother. Leave your gift and instead go get rectified with your brother, reconciled with your brother, and then come back for worship.
So let's discuss for a moment the idea that God sees us, knows us, and is always watching each of us.
Jesus tells us that God knows us so intimately that every one of the hairs on our head is numbered and that not a sparrow falls from the sky without his knowledge.
Now, that idea of God always watching us can be taken a couple of different ways.
One may look at all of that and get the idea that it's kind of big brotherish, right?
That is of course, accurate in the sense that God knows all of our sins.
But remember that he loves us and he wants a relationship with us despite all that.
So here is an AI representation of what sin might look like to God. All those tumors and sores representing the sins in our life. So you might say that's probably what God should see.
But when we clothe ourselves with Christ in obedience and baptism, all those tumors and sores are wiped away and our slate is wiped clean.
But even this is not what I feel like God sees. Instead, this is what I think God sees. I'm reminded of what God said to Samuel in 1st Samuel 16:7 when he says, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. This is when he is going to anoint David to be the new king.
For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
Another way of looking at this is he was always aware of our struggles.
He sympathizes with our difficulties, and within the scope of his will, he seeks to protect us. And we're given the promise in Jeremiah 29:11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
David also understood that God sees us and knows us. In Psalm 139, he talks about how intimately God knows him. A couple of those verses are listed here. He talks about the fact that you know me when I sit down and when I rise up.
You know my thoughts, you know all my ways, you know my words even before I say them. You are watching out for me in all directions, and you lay your hand of comfort on me.
On the right side of this slide is the Great Seal of the United States. Also on the back of the $1 bill in your wallet.
The eye of the pyramid is the all seeing eye, which of course is a reference to God.
As I just mentioned, there are basically two ways of considering the all seeing eye or God. To be honest, I've typically kind of thought of it as God is watching me, so I better not screw things up.
I used to work in a Navy work in Navy Intelligence and yes to my Army Navy and our Army Marine and Air Force buddies.
I know that's an oxymoron.
I thought it was humorous though that a number of the groups that I have encountered in my intelligence career talked about the fact that in God we trust all others we monitor.
I guess that's kind of the idea I envisioned for the all seeing eye of God.
Now what's this got to do with the lesson?
Well, as I was studying for this, that all seeing eye just kind of kept popping into my head. So I googled it and what struck me about the articles that I was reading was that the founding Fathers actually took the opposite view. Instead of thinking God is watching to catch us being in trouble, they talked about his benevolent oversight. In fact, annuit coeptis means God approves of our undertakings.
The point I'm trying to make is that yes, God is watching us and he sees our mistakes and our sins.
But for our discussion this evening, I want us to focus on the idea of benevolent oversight.
Namely, he sees us and understands our struggles, our hurts, the times we're mistreated by others, our doubts, our fears.
And he desperately wants us to trust him to make things right.
Even though that may take a while.
Let's consider some other examples of where God reveals to us in Scripture how He's watching out for his people, caring for those who at times may feel like they're invisible to God or to their fellow man.
So we'll begin with the Hero's hall of faith in chapter 11 of Hebrew Noah. Despite his efforts to preach righteousness to the people of his days for 120 years nobody was converted, nobody was saved from the flood, but his own family. And yet God made him the father of all mankind, Abraham.
He was promised to inherit the land of promise. We looked at that already to become a great nation. But he was essentially homeless and childless for a good portion of his life.
Joseph was completely forgotten by Pharaoh's cupbearer for three years while he languished in prison.
And yet God elevated him to second in command in all of Egypt.
Moses left Pharaoh's household was frequently rejected by the people of Israel as their leader lives in exile for 40 years.
But God ultimately elevated him to be the greatest leader that Israel ever had.
The children of Israel frequently rejected God, and yet he kept them fed and watered in the middle of a desert.
Rahab was a heathen prostitute, and yet God elevated her to be in the lineage of the Messiah, Gideon. His story begins with him threshing in a winepress so that the Midianites wouldn't see that he had food and take it away from him. And yet God elevated him to destroy the Midianites with 300 men.
And then finally, David is essentially invisible to Samuel and even to his own father when Samuel went to anoint the new king.
I would like to highlight a couple of things from this list. First of all, Hebrews 11 talks about the fact that many of these heroes of faith never saw the promises during their lifetime.
It can be tremendously discouraging when we pray for relief from our struggles and we don't see the evidence of God moving in our lives.
But consider a couple of examples. First of all, Noah. We know he worked on the Ark for 120 years, but he hadn't seen a drop of rain.
So how was there going to be a flood that was great enough to need a boat that large?
Another example of faith. Joseph died in Egypt before his people were ever even enslaved.
And yet he gave them instructions. Hey, when you're set free, take my bones with you to the promised land.
David was anointed as king to replace Saul.
So why did he have to run for his life for eight years before he took the throne?
Let's also consider Hagar again. God sees her struggles, sees that her boss is angry with her and has been mistreating her. So what are his instructions to her?
How is he going to rescue her from the wilderness?
Go back into the same situation that you just ran away from.
We know in hindsight that she had to run away again or was sent away again years later. And God again provides for in the wilderness. So why would God send her back to the same situation that she had already run away from?
We're not told.
That's where faith comes in.
God has already done his part. His perfect justice was satisfied when the sinless Savior went to the cross and died for our sins.
His grace grants us forgiveness through Christ, even though we don't deserve it. His mercy means that no matter how awful we have been, he stands ready to wipe our slate clean.
All we have to do is accept his free gift of salvation.
Our part is to trust him and believe his promises.
The ones that we read in his Word.
In particular, we may not see release from our struggles on this side of death, but his promise is that the reward that awaits us is far above anything that we can think or even imagine.
Consider also the life and times of the prophet Jeremiah. In particular, I want to emphasize kind of a tale of two peoples.
On the one hand, we have the mainstream Judeans. We have the leadership, the king, the priests, the false prophets.
On the other hand, we have a clan called the Rechabites, the mainstream Judeans. Let's talk about them for a minute. At least five times Jeremiah is told, do not pray for them, because I will not listen.
One of These is Jeremiah 7:16 on screen. Here they come to Jeremiah to seek the word of the Lord. On several occasions in chapter 38 of Jeremiah, King Zedekiah comes to Jeremiah and asks him to inquire of the Lord on his behalf. This is before the fall of Jerusalem and the Lord revealed through Jeremiah to King Zedekiah. Look, if you go and surrender to the Babylonians, you will not die and the city will not be destroyed. So what does Zedekiah do?
He's afraid of the people. And instead of listening to what the Lord said through Jeremiah, he decides not to surrender to the Babylonians.
Jerusalem is destroyed.
Zedekiah sees his city destroyed, sees his children put to death before his eyes, and then his own eyes are put out and he dies in captivity.
In chapter 42, this is after the fall. The leaders who remain after Jerusalem has fallen come to Jeremiah and ask him to inquire of the Lord.
And they swear whether it is good or bad.
We will listen to the voice of our Lord, of the Lord, our God. The Lord answers and tells them, remain in Jerusalem. Do not go to Egypt. So what did they do?
They went to Egypt, and they forced Jeremiah to go with them.
They accused of Jeremiah of lying, and so they went to Egypt anyway. Now on the other side is the Rechabites. Their ancestors, some 200 years earlier had decreed to his family in Jeremiah 35, verses 6 and 7, you shall not drink wine, neither you nor your sons, forever. You shall not build a house, you shall not sow seed, you shall not plant or have a vineyard, but you shall live in tents all your days, that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn.
So God, through Jeremiah, tests the Rechabites and says, put a pitcher of wine before them and tell them to drink up.
They refuse.
The Lord then has Jeremiah preach to the Judeans using the Rechabites as an object Lesson. And he says, beginning in verse 14:16 is on the screen there. The command that Jonadab the son of Rechab gave to his sons to drink. No wine has been kept, and they drink none to this day, for they have obeyed their father's command.
I have spoken to you Judeans persistently, but you have not listened to me. I have sent to you all my servants, the prophets, and sending them persistently saying, turn now every one of you from his evil way and amend your deeds and do not go after other gods to serve them. And then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to you and your fathers. But you did not incline your ear or listen to me. The sons of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, have kept the command that their father gave them, but this people has not obeyed me.
This is another example of God seeing each one of us. In this series of passages. We see that God knows the mainstream Judeans so well in their hard hearts that he tells Jeremiah, don't even pray for them.
We see how hard their hearts are when they blatantly reject the word of the Lord even after swearing that they will follow it.
On the other hand, the Rechabites are a clan that we know virtually nothing about.
God knows them so well that he calls them out and uses them as a lesson in obedience, knowing that they will remain true to their ancestors commands. In John chapter 4, when Jesus encounters the woman at the well, she understands that he is a prophet. When he asks her about her husband, she says, I've had five.
Or she says she's not married, and he tells her she's had five husbands and the one she's with now is not her husband.
She goes on to tell her friends and neighbors, he told me everything I ever did. So clearly she understood that God in the flesh saw her.
Now, my favorite is John chapter 1. Beginning in verse 47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said, behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no deceit.
Nathanael said to him, how do you know me?
Jesus answered, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathanael answered him, rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel.
We're not told much about this encounter in these three short verses, but clearly from verse 49, something miraculous has just happened. Nathaniel's declaration that Jesus is the Messiah clearly tells us that he suddenly realized that Jesus saw him and knows him intimately.
There is another aspect of knowing us that I would like to discuss briefly.
That is the idea of street creds in other words, the acceptance and respect that one gets from being members of a common so I have some street creds with airmen runners and IT people.
When I was young I lived on an aircraft carrier and flew in Navy jets.
I had 150 catapult launches and thanks to the grace of God, I had the exact same number of landings.
In short, eight of my squadron mates ended up with one less landing than they had takeoff.
So in short, I know a little bit about the danger and the excitement of naval aviation.
I also run a lot and I work in it.
So if you have any of those experiences, we have a lot of things in common already.
You know things about me even if we've never talked. And I know things about you for the same reason.
When I used to teach classes to inmates down in Montgomery, my friend whom I'll call Jake would sometimes go with me. Now Jake is a recovering addict, a recovering atheist, he spent some time in jail and he is also a wonderful human being.
I have not ever talked to him and mentioned some problem I'm dealing with at the house when he hasn't offered to make the three hour trip up from Montgomery to help me fix it.
I have a memory of one specific class that I taught at the prison down in Montgomery.
I have no idea what I said or what the class was about, but what's burned into my mind is what happened after class.
Typically we would end class and then we'd have like five to 10 minutes where the guards would do count.
And during that time we got a chance to interact with the inmates, sit and talk.
So I'm talking to one of the inmates up front and when I look up I see that there are 25 other guys all huddled around Jake because he has street creds with them.
He has walked in their shoes. He has seen the struggles that they have.
Now let's consider for a second some street creds for Jesus.
What kind of street creds does God have?
We see a lot of allusions in the Old Testament talking about him being a father to disobedient and rebellious children.
We see him refer to himself as the husband of an unfaithful wife.
And we see him as a friend that is often ignored or abandoned in the Gospels. We see the life of Jesus and wow, man, you talk about street creds. Here's a partial list here. He was born in poverty. They couldn't even afford a lamb to sacrifice per the law for his birth. He was born in a barn. His father died early his brothers and sisters rejected him during his ministry.
He was basically homeless for much of his life, hung out with sinners and with the downtrodden, with the sick.
He rarely had any extra food and money.
A friend betrayed him. Judas. Obviously he was denied by another friend, Peter. He was deserted by all of his friends at the cross.
He was mistreated by the Roman government.
The leaders of his own people rejected him and continuously tried to entrap him or get sound bites that they could use against him later.
His trial was completely illegitimate and held in the middle of the night, which was against the law. It was illegal. He was beaten, mocked and ridiculed and whipped mercilessly, and then of course, died on the cross, a method of torture. So he would die slowly. And I'm reminded of Hebrews chapter four in verse 15, where we're told we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
In other words, Jesus not only sees us, but he knows us and our struggles because he's been through them too.
Now consider how many times God has described as always being close to us.
Psalm 34:18 the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
2nd Timothy 4, 16, 17 Paul, writing here, says, at my first offense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me, may it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and all the Gentiles might hear it.
So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.
Then Paul again Acts chapter 17, verses 26 to 27 on Mars Hill and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him. I think some translations use the word crawl toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each of us. And finally, James 4. Eight draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
So earlier we talked about the Judeans at the time of the fall of Jerusalem and how God told Jeremiah, don't even pray for these people, because I won't listen.
That kind of seems harsh, doesn't it?
And frankly out of character for the same God who told us we should pray for our enemies and for those who spitefully use us.
So how do we reconcile that if God was loving them and sees them and their struggles in the Same way He sees us and ours.
How can this be?
For me? At least, I think James gave us the answer.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
In my mind's eye, the picture I see is that when you've turned your back on God and are deliberately walking away like the Judeans were, like the Pharisees were in Jesus Day, then your prayers are hypocritical anyway, and not anything that God will act on. However, the moment you turn around and, as in Acts 17 tells us, you crawl back toward him, he's right there, ready to welcome you back, just like we see in the story of the Prodigal Son.
But how can we possibly connect to a God that sees us, but whom we do not see at all?
First off, keep in mind that you are not alone when you feel this way.
Jesus certainly felt that way when he exclaimed from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We know Job felt that way.
The recent series of sermons on the Book of Lamentations makes it clear that Jeremiah felt that way.
David certainly felt that way when he penned Psalm 10, verse 1, which reads, why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
If you think about it, though, that feeling exists at times, even in our human relationships today.
When I was deployed with the Navy, it was common for weeks or months to pass between phone calls between Beth and me.
So we would write letters to each other every day. We sent a letter, but we had to number them because frequently we would get the last two weeks of mail, and then the mail from three weeks ago wouldn't show up until a month later.
So those communications were asynchronous. If you think about Internet dating today, oftentimes that's the same kind of thing. People have met and fallen in love without actually meeting in person through communications over the Internet. Again, asynchronous communications.
That's kind of the way our relationship is with God. We send our communications to God through our prayers.
He has given us his communications through His Word years before we were even born.
We send our communications back through prayer, but we don't see a response immediately.
Now, we talked a few moments ago about the fact that God has told us that he isn't far away.
However, we can't see him, even though he has promised that he is very near.
For whatever reason, the spiritual realm is not visible to us.
Now, here's several examples of times when God has allowed humans to see into that spiritual realm. We even see where he allowed Balaam's donkey to see the angels of the Lord, and a little bit later, he allowed Balaam himself to see the angel of the Lord.
In 1 Chronicles 21, we see that David lifted his eyes and was able to see the angel of the Lord that was basically there to destroy the people in Jerusalem. And then in 2 Kings, we see Elisha praying that the young man that was with him would see into the spiritual realm, see the armies of God that surrounded their enemies.
For us, though, we can't see across whatever that void is that separates us from the spiritual realm.
So we cannot connect with God in the same way we connect with each other.
So in my mind at least, it's kind of like when I have something really important to say.
I don't really want to say that through text or email, but I may have to. Why is that? Because text and email don't carry any tone of voice. There is no body language, there's no cadence, there's no emotion or tone in my communications if I send my communications through text or email.
Hopefully our prayer lives and our communications to God do not share that limitation. Hopefully we're comfortable pouring out our hearts to God and sharing with him the things that are really important to us.
On the other hand, we get no immediate feedback from God, so it makes it difficult to feel that personal connection.
We do have examples, however, from His Word where we do see those personal or those answers to prayer, where we cannot question that God was responding to their prayers.
And we can be aware through His Word the many times he has demonstrated his profound love for us through the things that we read of in His Word. So knowing this, that the relationship feels distance at times, how do we connect with God?
First, for those who have never connected with God at all or have walked away, realize there is nothing we have done that God cannot forgive.
I have heard people say things like, if God knew what I've done in my past, there's no way he could ever forgive me.
That is, of course, a gross misunderstanding of God's grace, and it completely contradicts His Word.
Keep in mind that the Bible is not a book of virtues.
It's a book of good news.
It's not a series of stories of moral exemplars. It's a record of God's intervening grace into people's lives who don't deserve it, who sometimes don't appreciate it, sometimes resist it, or don't seek it.
And yet God loves us in spite of this.
We talked a moment ago about the fact that we cannot see God, so we cannot use the normal senses to make that connection. There we go.
Second Corinthians 5, 6, 9.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.
Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. So although we cannot see God with our physical eyes, we can see him through the eyes of faith.
That is how we connect with God. We can't see through those barriers. We can't see through that void that separates us from the spiritual realm. But he has demonstrated to us over and over and over in His Word how much he loves us, how much he cares for us, and how much he sees our struggles.
If we consider for a moment, the only time we ever see Jesus amazed is in the context of people's faith. The first time he is so amazed that the people of his own hometown have so little faith that they cannot even accept Him. The other time we see he's amazed by faith. It's the other extreme. He is amazed of the centurion's faith because he is willing, sight unseen, to have Jesus come and heal his servant.
Now why do so many people my age travel across the country and leave their families or their friends and perhaps the only home they've ever known?
It's because they want to be near their family. They want to be near their kids and grandkids.
Is it hard for us to understand that God wants us to be near him as well?
And John 14:1, verse 3 specifically reminds us of that fact.
Jesus says, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
Let's close with a word of prayer.
Father in heaven, we're thankful for the promise that you love us and that you care for us and that you see our struggles.
Please strengthen our faith, Father, when we are enduring struggles and we're having a hard time seeing your hand in our lives, help us to realize that you are always there, you always care for us, and that the promise you have made for us is more, is of greater value than anything we can think or imagine. In Jesus name, Amen.
