"God, Do You See Me? Because I Can't See You"
“Mommy, can you see me? Because I can’t see you,” my three-year old self asked my mother.
“Oh, what a pretty girl, yeah,” she laughed.
My family and I watched some of our old family movies over Christmas. It was so special! We took all our old VHS movies home for the kids to watch and set up the VHS in their room with a tv intended only for retro fun (they had no idea what a VHS was. “What?! It’s STILL not done rewinding?!”).
This video my parents took was stuck in my head.
“Mama, can you see me? Because I can’t see you.”
God, Can You See Me?
There are times in every believer’s life when they cannot see God. They can’t see His hand on their efforts, His provision for their finances or His faithfulness in their difficult times.
We’re told to have faith and that is what faith is, but I can’t help but wonder if there is more to it than that.
What if, God was making a movie. What if, He was the one holding the camera, taking a record of the moments, all the moments, to later reference.
How does God the director, God the parent, God the all-seeing power, see us?
He Records Every Moment
God is the ultimate filmmaker. Wouldn’t it be so cool to show up in heaven and see the movie reel of our lives? Imagine how many small moments there were, like the one from my home movie, where God saw us, when we didn’t see Him.
“The God who made the world and everything in it—he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.”
-Acts 17:24-26 (CSB)
Let’s go over this verse deeper.
“The God who made the world and everything in it—he is Lord of heaven and earth…”
I live about twenty-five minutes outside of New York City. When I first started to visit the city, I was blown away by the magnitude of it.
I can still remember my first-ever visit on my nineteenth birthday when I came on a bus tour from Canada with my mom. As the bus approached the skyline, I exclaimed with very loud and girlish squeals, I’m home!”.
But now that I live here, I no longer scream when I see the skyline. I like to look at it. I think it’s beautiful. However, the novelty has worn off. I don’t chase it like I once did. Stop, take a breath and capture it in photos.
We hear the same old Christian “lingo” over and over again. So much, the magnitude of what we hear and read wanes over time.
But it’s magical.
God, the Lord of heaven and earth, we look like Him. He gives us His mind (Phil. 2:5-8). He fabricated the earth for us to live in. How can I say that in a way that properly expresses how incredible it is?!
We should scream about it, revel in the beauty of it.
“…does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.”
To make things even more amazing, God lives in us. He gave us His Spirit. Through His Holy Spirit, we can talk to Him, feel things from Him, think thoughts like Him. If we allow ourselves to be completely and totally overwhelmed by the Spirit of God- we will never spend a day unchanged.
It can be difficult to keep “the fire of Christianity” alive, but this is the way; To allow the Holy Spirit to change who we are daily.
I have a long way to go in “becoming like Christ” but I am certain that so long as I never lose my zeal for Jesus or let Satan convince me that my life is ordinary, routine and nothing special, that I will continue to grow.
*A note on having “zeal for the Lord”: Passionately loving Jesus does not have to look like crying in church, laying on the floor every day being slain in the Spirit, or living a prophetic lifestyle where you are part of miracle after miracle. To love Jesus you do not need to be the most well-versed Biblical scholar in the room, you do not need to sing loudly in church, or volunteer with the kid’s club.
You know how we know Jesus truly loved God? He withdrew from everyone to be alone with Him.
Intimacy comes before evidence.
“From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.”
There’s those boundaries again! God loves a good boundary.
God has already “appointed your time”. Believe it or not, I get a lot of emails that say, “I want to do what you do, how do I do it?!” and all I can think to reply is, “I don’t know, you need to ask God because I didn’t do this!”.
God appointed a time for this ministry, but it’s still very small. I would think there will be a day when Grey Ministries grows and expands, but maybe there won’t be. And you know, that’s alright. If all God wants me to do is speak to who I am speaking to now, that’s totally okay with me.
Mind you, I would like the blog expenses covered. Dear Jesus, can we please break even?
Don’t be in such a rush to have responsibility!
I have three young children and when my husband’s son is staying with us, there are four of them. It’s a lot! In the average marriage, where the husband has never had an addiction and the story isn’t this one, it might have been possible for me to leave the children with him, travel around and go talk to churches. I might have had time to write another book and then properly market it. I might have been able to hire a part-time babysitter to watch the children while I work from home.
And maybe not.
God has set the course for everything. I don’t need to worry about where the ministry is headed or how I’m going to grow it. Marketing feels more like a distraction for me than it is a benefit. Took me awhile to figure that out, though!
All I know is- God told me to write, He will do the rest. He’s determined the appointed time. My job is to do the work, His job is to facilitate the blessing.
It’s the same for our loved ones in their addictions and recovery. Don’t let Satan convince you for even a moment that God doesn’t have the end in sight or know what’s going to happen.
Our job is to pray it out, create loving boundaries (with God!) and live within them. It’s God’s job to do the fixing and the healing.
Everything else is only a distraction.
“If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.”
―Corrie ten Boom
While you’re living this out…
Withdraw, spend time time with God alone and get to know who you are to Him (we have a short Bible study on it here!).
Think about how amazing it is that God lives within you and has appointed your time and also those you love.
Join us on our Fresh 2019 journey to clear the clutter out of our hearts and homes!
“God, can you see me? Because I can’t see you,”
“Oh, what a pretty girl, yeah,” He laughs.