She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who
sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”~ Genesis 16:13
I love the
Bible. I love it for a whole bunch of Churchy McChurch reasons, but I am not
going to give you all of my favorite Sunday school explanations as to why I am
a fan of God’s word. Instead I will be authentic with you. I love the Bible because it’s real, and at
times it’s really funny. It confronts and challenges humanity at the core of who
we are and what we can become if we are left to our own devices. One of my
favorite examples of biblical realness is found in Leviticus 19:14.
“Do not curse the deaf or
put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear
your God. I am the Lord”
Let me put this
passage in contemporary lingo for you:
Don’t make fun of deaf people, and don’t
trip blind people, seriously, it’s rude! I’m God and I see what you’re up to;
watch yourselves!
God is God. He knows our hearts and He gives
real direction to real people who live in a really fallen world. God is not
only real with us but He also has an ironic and amusing way of looking at the
world. Take Judges 6:11-12
The
angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to
Joash the Abiezrite, where his
son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you,
mighty warrior!”
I find this passage humorous because at
this point in the narrative Gideon is anything but mighty and the furthest
thing from a warrior. In fact, he’s kind of wretched and sad. The angel finds
him hiding in a cave frantically trying to thresh wheat with the wrong tool
while entertaining some pretty serious doubts about God and too fearful of man
to confront the idolatry in his own family.
It’s a good thing God clues angels into
His plans because if He hadn’t I’m pretty sure that the angel would have
wondered if he had found the right guy. I can just see an angel watching this nervous
little guy hiding out in a cave, threshing wheat in a wine press and saying:
The Lord is with you….
mighty warrior??
This passage not only illustrates God’s
sense of irony but also His mercy towards us. It gives us a critical glimpse
into how God views the redeemed. After careful study of this passage I am fully
convinced that God see us much differently than we see ourselves.
Most of us are inclined to see ourselves
in the most negative light imaginable. When we assess ourselves we list the
negatives first and if we ever get to our positive points we tend to downplay
them. Thankfully, God views us differently, once we get to the place where we
ask God for forgiveness and submit to His authority He sees what we are capable
of becoming if we fully surrender ourselves to His plan and He treats us as if
we have already become what He knows we are capable of.
Think about it like this, when you
evaluate yourself you may see someone who is:
Hopeless
Fearful
Inadequate
Incapable
Clueless
God sees you as someone who is:
Forgiven
Heroic
Complete in Him
Competent
Clever
This truth is illustrated beautifully in 1st
Peter 1:8.
But you are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may
declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful
light.
I have not achieved the reality of what
God says about me in this verse, and my guess is that you haven’t either. That
doesn’t stop God from boldly declaring that right this minute, you are: holy,
priestly, unique and incredibly special. The truth that God sees the redeemed
not as they are, but as what they are capable of becoming, is profound and
should affect our lives in profound ways. This truth should cause us to live
our lives in a radically different way. As holy and dearly loved children of
the Living God we should be inclined to:
Strive to become what we have been
declared~
We can respond to this reality in one of
two ways: the first would be to intellectually process the truth with an
attitude of thankfulness and move on. That attitude is a good place to begin
but a terrible place to end. If we respond with just gratitude we may very well
miss out on the whole point of Christian living. The understanding of how God
chooses to see us should create in our hearts a holy impatience to be exactly
what and who God says we are.
Our spirits should be overcome with a longing
that drives us to “live up to what we have already attained” (Philippians
3:16). We live up to what we have attained by recognizing that there is
absolutely nothing in our actions or character that cannot be changed with the assistance
of God and then acting on that truth. Freedom begins and bondages are broken
when we initiate the process of letting go of bad behaviors and replacing them
with new ones. This is how we obey the command given in Philippians 2:12 to
work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The beauty of this process is
that we aren’t left to figure it out alone. God walks with us every step of the way.
Strive to see other people the way God
sees them~
For most of us, the only thing in this
world we view more negatively than ourselves is other people. We tend to see
their motives as bad and their behavior questionable, whether we have proof of
bad behavior or not. Grasping the
reality that God sees us as forgiven, special and dearly loved is one of the
most freeing things in the world. It not only frees us from trying to earn
God’s favor; it empowers us to see other people in a more positive light as we
grasp the reality that He is working on them just as He’s working on us. As we
learn to look at people through God’s lenses we are more inclined to become
encouragers rather than critics and cheerleaders rather than naysayers.
Worship God with every aspect of our
lives~
The Book of Romans is sometimes called
Paul’s ultimate apologetic or defense of the gospel. He spends eleven long
chapters explaining the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. He goes
into great detail for his readers explaining in no uncertain terms that we
are all sinners who stand condemned before God. He goes on to explain that it
was not God’s will to doom people to destruction but to offer salvation through
faith in Jesus Christ as a gift available to anyone willing to take it. Paul gets
to chapter twelve and he sums up in one verse the proper response to an
eleven-chapter explanation of God’s offer of salvation:
And so, dear brothers and
sisters, I plead with you to
give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a
living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the
way to worship him~ NLT
Our
response to God’s goodness should be worship—and not just a halfhearted singing
on Sunday morning kind of worship. Instead our worship should be a complete
submission of our whole selves to God and His purposes. This kind of worship
changes the way we do and view everything. That kind of wholehearted worship is
the only truly proper response to the God who really sees you.
For you were once darkness, but now you are
light in the Lord. Live as children of light~ Ephesians 5:8