Seeing the Unseen

There are all kinds of people. And depending on your personal preferences you will find them to varying degrees desirable as a person or undesirable, meaning that you enjoy being around some people and hate being around others.

The vast number of our encounters with other people are neutral in that you don’t know them well enough to make any kind of realistic judgment about their personality or character. But of course, we are drawn to some people and repulsed by others, even before we get to know them.

I have a confession to make. God has shown to me that over the years I got much pleasure and enjoyment from using people. It’s a part of my sinful nature. I feel better about myself and I can add self-worth or greater value to myself if people like me. It’s a hidden motivation for some of us. We perform for approval. On the other hand, the purity of an Agape love has no such strings attached. You simply love another person or persons without selfish motivations.

This means you may love those you consider to be your inferior. Don’t deny it. All humans make this type of judgment. We size them up quickly by their socioeconomic status, education, intelligence, looks, grooming, race, social standing, history, personality, attitudes perceived, hygiene, physical shape, and achievements. We judge others before we have a chance to know much about them.

God, on the other hand…

…sees the heart, meaning he sees the whole person and every circumstance that made them the way they are. We are all sinful, broken people who have been raised by sinful, broken people, and I mean, every aspect of humans is broken even though many do a good job of hiding their sin and brokenness. We reflect God in that we were created in His image therefore we see much good, but the virus of sin has messed up our programming.

God sees the whole person and every circumstance that made them the way they are, and He takes that into account in His great mercy and compassion.

Imagine if it were impossible to hide the heart from other people. Imagine everyone on Earth walking around and looking physically on the outside exactly as the way they look on the inside. This is how God sees all of us. Nothing is hidden from Him and yet he loves us with infinite love.

 God sees your heart, your soul, every thought that has ever floated through your mind, the “real” you.

Seeing the Unseen

God is love and we use the word Agape to express this kind of love. Only God can love this way and His greatest expression of this love was in sending His Son to the Earth to save us from ourselves. We must receive Agape love from Him as we have no natural source from within ourselves.

Agape love can either the expressed in the freedom to love someone without knowing anything about them, the good, the bad, or the ugly, or it can be expressed in the love for someone that you see and know all too well. You know their capacity for evil and selfishness, even the hidden contained within, the secret actions or attitudes others may have never seen.

Jesus knows the very worst about you and also your capacity of the human heart for evil. This includes not loving others, passivity towards others. I believe that if we had been put into other people’s circumstances, we might have turned out far worse than they did. For example, just look at dogs. Dogs raised with discipline and love are a pleasure to be around. Dogs tortured and treated cruelly are a danger.

I believe that God…

…also judges each of these things and minds. An abused, unloved child doesn’t have the advantages you had. God sees this in His great mercy and love. He also sees that we were all born into sin, separated from Him and His glorious nature. He sees everything that happened to you, every circumstance, and He takes that into account.

But he also sees our sin nature’s effect on us. Our nature to rebel against Him, to be stubborn, to reject the honor that is rightfully His as Creator. We were born with the capacity to be our own God’s, to act as if we not only created ourselves but that we have enough sense to rule ourselves. This is laughable. We can see how man has ruled himself through the record of history. Man is seriously broken!

Only Jesus saves us from self-rule. He puts the order of things back into the balance He designed. He becomes rightful God to us, the way it was when He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden.

Jesus is the only way to subdue the rebellion of your heart.

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