“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:5, NIV.
One of my biggest disappointments with this earthly life is that I can’t see the Lord face to face while I am living it.
Every one of us loves to spend time with a special friend. When I’m together with that person, I know I’m accepted and loved just as I am, and I don’t have to pretend to be someone else to win approval. The conversation we have is stimulating, encouraging, insightful… and meaningful!
Oftentimes, a friend will have a viewpoint and experience outside my own that I find refreshing or relieving, and there comes a lightening of my burdens through our being vulnerable and sharing together. Sometimes my friend can sympathize with me and comfort me, or help me break out of the despondence that threatens to overwhelm. Sometimes my friend can help me laugh in the middle of my struggles, or remind me that better days are coming. Sometimes a friend can say something very challenging, and it may take me days, weeks, or months to wrestle with that truth to come to a place of deeper understanding.
Nowadays, we can get a fairly instant response from a friend if we really need to. We can call them on a smart phone, or message them, or tweet, or email, etc., etc. We can post to our walls on Facebook, and many friends can chime in with a response at one time. It’s comforting to have such instant means to connect to someone.
Even now, though, it’s sometimes hard to reach a friend. Perhaps you’ve left a voicemail for a friend, with an expression of urgent need, and then you don’t hear back from the friend for a week. We have such an expectation of instant feedback that we might be tempted to think less of the friend somehow, forgetting that our friends have burdens and responsibilities, and sometimes are forgetful, just as we do, and are.
In the year 1776, in the American colonies, you couldn’t just pick up a phone and call that special friend. You’d have to either get out and walk, or saddle up your horse and ride, or get out your quill and ink to write a letter, in order to at least convey a message to your friends. If you could only write, and depending how far the letter would have to be carried by horse, it could be weeks before your friend could come to you personally, or return a letter.
With the Lord, it is different. I can’t go out and walk or ride to where He is, and see Him face to face. I can’t call Him on my cell phone, and hear the sound of His voice responding to what I say. He doesn’t send me instant tweets or write on my Facebook wall, or “poke” me. I can’t even send a letter by horse, and receive one back from from a heavenly rider.
When I ask God specific questions, He doesn’t speak audibly. When I have a major decision to make, and I have the time to go to Him, again and again, before having to make a choice, He doesn’t write His answer in the sky. Sometimes, I’m tempted to wonder if He is even listening, as when I talk with a friend that dozes completely off while we’re talking. (I’ve been that dozing friend on too many occasions, when exhaustion and comfortable surroundings conspire to slay me with sleep).
Too often, we grow impatient with our “slumbering” Friend. We distrust the One who does not seem to check His voicemail. We grow tired of having a Father Who seems to consistently return silence when we “poke” Him. Did He miss my snapchat—I thought He sees everything?
But our God does not slumber, nor sleep. He hears my voice when I call, no matter how far away I can imagine He is from me, and He knows my every thought, before I think it. Through the prophets of old, He has spoken, and still speaks, into every situation and experience known to mankind.
The real issue is this: how far will I trouble myself to hear from Him? Will I walk across a room and pick up a Bible and search the words He has given to us all? Will I take a moment and ask Him to show me something in His word or in my heart, to open my eyes, to His Truth and His Presence? Will I try, again and again, to hear from Him if I remain perplexed or feel alone?
God absolutely loves it when we treat Him as Someone worth being pursued, sought after, and praised, no matter what life circumstances come. If there is a perceptible distance between me and God, I know it is I who created that distance, it is I who turned away, it is I who wronged the greatest Friend I’ll ever have.
Sometimes it takes awhile to recognize that we’ve left our God out of our lives. Since we are creatures of routine and pattern, we can coast within our roles and our rituals, thinking all the while that we are including God in what we are doing. We can even serve, pray, think, speak and act spiritual, but deep down, have what God must know is a casual indifference in our heart of hearts.
Oftentimes, it is a period of suffering that wakes me up to the reality that I’m just coasting on the powerlessness of my own gas. What a blessing it is to suffer, if I reconnect with God in a more desperate way! It is a privilege to see my own limitations, to peer over the edge of the abyss, and realize that I am at the end of myself… and that God must absolutely save me from myself, and work in power, with resources that I cannot possess apart from Him.
At moments like these, I gain my clearest picture of Him, because what happens next allows me to experience Him, and to see the beautiful and complex mosaic that He is working out. Sometimes He saves me within my circumstances in a dramatic fashion, sometimes in a quiet way, and sometimes I have to look around and wonder if anything is different, only to find that my heart towards Him is tender, and that my craving for His nearness and life is deeper than before. It is this last salvation that is the most precious, when I realize I have everything I truly need in Him, even if life circumstances should grow harder.
And this is the heart God is after… this is the Life He wants to grow in me. It is invisible to the naked eye, undetectable in the sight of the world, and oftentimes forgotten, or overlooked, by the people who are called by His name.
This invisible life is what God loves and rewards. He sees the heart that longs for Him, that looks for Him, that begs Him to BE the difference. He has determined that the righteous shall live by faith, and not by sight.
I said before that one of my biggest disappointments in this earthly life is that I cannot see the Lord face to face… well, my greatest opportunity to bless the Lord is to cultivate a heart that sees Him despite having eyes of flesh, and that values Him above all else that parades before me.
Lamentations 3:18-26. “So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.’ I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.’ The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”