A theme in recent church services I have attended lately is how God shows up in our lives. The question “How has God shown up recently in your life?” gets asked.
How would you respond to that question? Is that even a question you have ever thought about?
God has been showing up in my life recently. He has made His presence known to me in the last couple months in various ways. It’s not like God magically appears in the sky and descends down to my level in a glowingly incredible way. Only God knows and decides all the ways he shows up. One thing is for certain, the more you look for Him the more you will find Him.
What I think this conversation brings forth is the concept of “seeing” God. We often think about “speaking” to God, especially through prayer. After all, faith is a relationship, and any relationship requires communication.
The Bible talks about faith as being, “The confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is that evidence of things we cannot see,” (Hebrews 11:1).
This is exactly where I think some of us draw the line when it comes to God.

It’s not like God magically appears in the sky and descends down to my level in a glowingly incredible way. Only God knows and decides all the ways he shows up.

I feel like people who don’t know God, who don’t have faith, who might refuse God, do so on the basis that “God hasn’t shown up in my life.” They have been waiting for God to reveal Himself only to be disappointed. They deny God because they have not seen Him. They think God hasn’t been with them. If you are one of these people, have you been waiting for God or have you been actively looking for Him?
If God hasn’t shown up in your life, it’s probably because you haven’t been looking for Him!
If you are critical of God not showing up in your life, maybe you should be more critical of yourself because God has been with you the entire time. He has been the one waiting for you! He loves you and has loved you for your entire life, and wants to love you for the rest of eternity. You have to open your eyes and look for him.
Let’s say you really want to see a shooting star. Would you ever notice a shooting star if you never look up? You have to look for it if you’re going to see it. What makes God different from a shooting star though, is if you truly look for God using the eyes of your heart, you will see Him. Conversely, you might look a thousand times for a shooting star and never see one.
If you want to “see” God, you have to open your eyes, the eyes of your heart. If you’ve been seeing darkness, then you need to take off the sunglasses and put on your spiritual glasses, and you will see the light.
Before I go into talking about what I mean when I say “seeing” God, I want to say a few words about looking for God. Just because you don’t look for God doesn’t mean He won’t show up. He always shows up; He’s always there.
God can make himself known to you even if you never looked for Him once before. My point should be understood more as, the probability of you experiencing and seeing God is much greater if you are looking for Him in the first place.
Now, how the heck do we “see” God? How do we see that of which cannot be seen? Let me tell you how I see God.
I see God in other people, in how they act and interact with others. I see God especially in how He changes people’s lives. God turns the hopeless into the hopeful. He turns the cruel into loving individuals. He turned me into someone who loves others much more than I did before and into someone with a clear purpose.
We need to remember to think about God in terms of the Holy Trinity. We can’t always physically see God the Father, and we can’t physically see Jesus because Jesus was alive about 2015 years ago. What we can witness is the amazing work of the Holy Spirit, God’s gift to us. It is through the Holy Spirit that we “see” God.
When you look for God through the Holy Spirit, you will see differently, I promise. God promises too.
Another reason why I think people are critical of God is because they think either God was not present during tough times or that he let bad things happen. They ask, “Where was God when I lost my job, when I lost my house, when I lost my best friend?” Similarly, “If God did exist, He wouldn’t have let this happen.”
In response to this, I have what might seem like a shocking statement: God does not cause everything. There are certain things God does not control. Things happen in life that have nothing to do with God. However, God emerges in how we respond to such things. What this is getting at is a discussion of what it means to say God has a plan for us, which will be the topic of next week’s article.
In the meantime, think about what type of perspective you are choosing to see through. Remember, you are as close to God as you want to be.
The moment you become friends with God is the moment you decide you want to be friends with God.
The moment you begin to “see” through God’s eyes is the moment you open your heart and truly look for Him.

-Colin Rieke