Real Clear Truth

Many of us want to see God more clearly. We like to worship Him and seek His face in part because we desire to know Him better. In some ways, it is not hard to love God because all we need to do is trust that He really is a good God. He rarely speaks to us in ways that directly challenge us — though maybe that’s because we tend to be hard of hearing.

But people are quite another matter. It can be quite difficult to love people who don’t love us back, and perhaps even hurt us.  And because people can be harder to love, we tend to turn our focus to God — or as some say, “just Jesus and me”.

But what if we could see God in people? Consider this quote from David Litwin of the Daniel Project:

What if instead of saying, ‘Lord reveal more of yourself to me,’ we say ‘Lord reveal more of yourself to me through people?’ I want to see more of the face of God, so I’ll do it through encouraging people to be more like Christ, and in turn see Him through them. How does that change the way we order our steps? How does that change the way we value relationships? If my focus is on knowing God deeper through people, then I must invest my time in people. I cannot use people, for I will never see God through their lives if I do. I cannot demean people, for I will sabotage my own intimacy with the Father. I cannot segment or compartmentalize people, because I might miss a piece of what the beautiful Christ looks like.

This idea of seeing God’s face in people by encouraging them to be like Christ is quite interesting. We have often heard how we can see God in nature, and maybe even in people, but not how we can see God even better if only we help people to be more like Christ himself. I like this.

Think about it. Have you ever seen God smiling as you see people worshiping Him? Have you ever seen His joy as people extend love to the hurting? Have you ever seen His grace as people mend the broken hearted?

At any moment in time we are not only “actors” in God’s fantastically woven story (see here), we are also privileged to be spectators, where we can take moments to appreciate what God is doing all around us, and then step back in and play a part in helping the other characters in this story contribute to what God is doing and saying.

I have always found a great pleasure to stop at times and just watch people as God must see them - not as flawed creatures, but as those He dearly loves. The greatest pleasures for me are when I see faces lit up in simple love for Him, or alive with faith and expectancy of what He is doing, or moved in love for others.

To see that is to see what God delights to see. To see that is to sense His pleasure. And in sensing this, we see and know God more than ever.

But we not only can watch as spectators and see what God sees, we can also encourage people to play out the roles (or callings) that God has planned for their lives. And in doing so, we will not only help them become more like Him, we will see a little more of Him all around us.

And that’s pretty cool. Yes?