15 Minutes
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us...worship is pure or worship is base, as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the people is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep thought conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move towards our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual, but of the company of believers. Always the most revealing thing about God’s people is their idea of God, and what is the most significant message they say about Him or leave unsaid, for their silence is often more eloquent than their speech.
God’s people can never escape the self- disclosure of their witness concerning God. Were we able to extract from any person a complete answer to the question, “what comes into your mind when you think about God?” We might measure with certainty the spiritual forthcoming of that person. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential teachers think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the people of God will stand tomorrow. That our thoughts of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. A right conception of God is basic living as according to His word. Our thoughts of God are to worship what the understanding is to the sanctuary; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. There is scarcely an error in principle or a failure in applying biblical truth that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
Nothing changes a human being faster than a deeper understanding of who God is. God sees our thoughts to know that we have Him in our mind. And thoughts of God are the believer’s constant source of strength. The martyr languishes in the flames but his mind flies upward to God his Savior and looks forward blissfully to the glory that awaits him even as his body sinks to ashes. The imprisoned believer forgets the harsh regime of the camp, the daily grind and grueling labor, as his mind soars upward on the wings of hope to remember God. The weary teacher, struggling with unfamiliar syllables and convoluted grammar in his appointed sphere of service sees beyond the frustrations of the hours as he remembers God. The faithful group studying the word of God, entombed in their study and confronted with an agenda of reasoning to revelation of truths, brightens in their minds and feel their hearts quicken as they remember that their God sees their thoughts from above. The thought of God enlivens all actions. The thought of God should be the believer’s panacea. It should cure all ills at a stroke. And what an infinity there is in the thought of God! Nothing can approach in beauty to the idea of the true and living God. If our thoughts about God are not rising to include the higher glories of truth, then they are amounting to a moral calamity. The first step down for any person is taken when he or she surrenders truth to their opinion of God. God is not different from what He actually is; He is just so much more. Inherent in Christ’s personhood is every shade and texture and breath and aspect and heartbeat and death knell and meaning of whatever love is. And by extension, God is in His presence more expressive of the reality of the evidence of the substance that is Jesus Christ. For he is the faith in every thought that we can never adequately define or even understand it as God sees it. There is no definition that we could put to God. We could never catalog His love. God sees our every thought as a moment of awe...a reason to worship...a hope in the unbreakable promise that the best is yet to come.
We must learn to experience God in a real way. The masses of adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind. Whenever we lose a right view of God, everything else gets out of perspective. Sad to say, too many are suffering from an impoverished vision of Him as a god with manlike characteristics. A god made in our image, an inversion of the truth of man made in his image. Human qualities and finite limitations have been assigned to the One who exceeds our comprehension. Our thoughts are to be that there is so much God that He is infinitely unceasingly increasing. It is to be as though we need nothing more, yet long for His continuing forthcoming revelation. Our faith is to precede full understanding as relevant biblical truth and specific passages increase the value of truth. Man can think God’s thoughts after Him but never greater. Though incomprehensible, God is knowable as we believe the truths that God has revealed about Himself. How does God see us?
God sees every word. If we are a truthful and faithful people we should be comforted to know that God sees our every word. Let’s reason...we as humans have the gift of hearing. We call this the auditory component of life. Extremely beneficial in that it is to project or express what a person means. Words spoken, words heard, can deceive and delude and conceal and avoid. There can be hidden insinuations in spoken words not detected by simply hearing. What if a visual component is added. Where every word is seen in its full purpose. Might that change the way we hear the sound. Visual information offers perception whereby there is no mismatch in what is spoken, what is heard, what is seen. God seeing the word is the actual witnessing of what stimulates the information in the testimony. Nothing can stop the vision of God. Isn’t it a wonder that God not only hears our prayers...He sees them. Words are more than just accounted for. Every aspect of every word is recorded pictorially giving explicit details graphically, realistically, detailedly, forcefully, tellingly, authentically, representatively.
It is a studious concern to understand what is meant by “God foresees everything”. It’s more than just being aware beforehand. It literally means “to see”, “to realize” as a development, including consequences based upon the knowledge derived and applied to ordinary reasoning and experience. Divine inspiration adds the evocation of exceptional wisdom or discernment with feeling, memory, and image to the conscious mind. When a word is spoken, every invisible corresponding effect is revealed to God. Every stimulus of a word is detected. This is what God sees. Every word spoken is seen by God to provide information related to intended or unintended consequences. God knows and sees how the power of the words of the tongue contribute to shaping lives, events, beliefs and even death. God not only sees the words we speak, He watches His own word. No spoken word from God shall be without power or impossible of fulfillment. He sees the actual performance of His words. God watches to see if we speak His truth. He sees when we use the powerful and hope-filled words of Christ to change our perspective, our outlook and our circumstances. When we speak words of truth for the glory of God to help others, God sees the good manifested in our lives. This moves us into His divine will and abundance as He promised that His words would do in accomplishing His purposes.
Our every prologue in the last days is to be a unique blessing to those who hear. These words of truth are the revelation of what Jesus sees. And God did not give it to him to tell us, God gave it to him to show things coming. God grants us the priviledge not only to speak prophetic words but to also see them as we are to offer vivid descriptions to the people. Remember, John turned to see the voice...how does God see us? God sees every deed. The eyes of the lord are in every place. His watchful eyes can see every hidden thing. Every act of obedience, great and small, all has meaning because God is watching, and we have eternal value to Him. In every deed we perform, God sees the measure of faith. God sees our actions against the idea of how Jesus would do it. We are to think with sober judgment using Jesus as our measuring line and our aspiration. The measure relates to the apportioning of our faith, for some are weak in the faith and their deeds show discord with right motives, thoughts, and words. When we are in Christ our deeds are spiritually sound. Our deeds are sanctified in Christ. Our deeds are purposed in Christ. God no longer sees our shortcomings; He sees the right doings of His own Son.
In Christ God sees our deeds done in love, and He bestows upon us His abundant gifts and the riches of His grace. God sees us in Christ as an inheritor. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. God sees these good works done, not in our own strength and for our own benefit, but by the grace of God and in obedience to Him - led by the Holy Spirit, to God’s glory. We do the first works. The beginning of our spiritual journey when we first fell in love with Jesus Christ. We possessed a great spiritual hunger. We enjoyed rich fellowship among the brethren. We had an eagerness to repent and to receive what God had for us. We cherished the Word of God. We sacrificed our former religious reputation for Jesus. We were committed to applying God’s Word to our lives. We were receptive to the power of God and to the gifts of the Spirit. We loved Jesus and the wonder-working power yoked with his name. We were quick to confess our sin and turn from our evil works. We severed all connections with a pagan past at great personal cost. We accepted the lost of relations for the sake of Christ. We were faith-filled. We were known for our love of the brethren. The first works are the works done in secret for the Lord out of our first love for Him. We don't do them for others to see. The intensity, though not diminished, must be zealously pursued. It is God who works in us to encourage us to do our utmost good. And the operations of God's grace in us are so far from excusing, that they are intended to quicken and engage our endeavors. It is love that influences our works so that they are pure and good and stand the test before God.
Anything short of this is pure deception.
What we do matters. Not attempting to earn salvation. We desire that the people not see us in the deeds done, but see the critical message of serving others for the glory of God. For kingdom’s life looks like service. God’s harvest depends upon the works we do. We have a work/faith ethic that is to bring others to Christ. And our deeds done are to focus our witness on Christ. All things are naked and opened to the eyes of God. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Our trust is to be fully found in Him for He sees the wholeness of every aspect of our being from beginning to end. It is in this trust that we stand still and allow God to have His way in the affairs of our lives and that of the world. And whatever He sees of us and whenever He sees us, He sees us now as we are in Christ. God sees our motives, our thoughts, our words, our deeds, real and potential, and He knows them all at the same time. Reason faithfully with this truth – every motive, thought, word, and/or deed is for strength or weakness in the sight of God. They are either for our sobering or for our dispiriting. Our lives can be spiritually deteriorated if our consciousness of God is not present in every aspect of life. If we are not in the right atmosphere, God’s will may be secreted from us. Yet ‘His divine will’, will always be done. Our every contemplation is to be done in the truth of God with the mind of Christ.
As we think about the widest context of what God sees in our motives, thoughts, words, and deeds we come to reason that each of these will be compiled for detailed understanding in the panoramic view. With that, there are two aspects of God’s way of arranging to be with us: human character transformation and divine mediation. God sees when the interaction of our motive, thought, word, and deed are in the form of spiritual maturity or formed of ignorance and lack of character. God certainly could have gotten in the face of Adam and Eve and prevented them from succumbing to Satan’s clever appeals. Instead, God arranged for them to be “on their own,” and the result was then expressed in their motive, thought, word, and deed. It was what they did. God’s allowing us to be “on our own” in order to develop character within us is an arrangement He still abides by and regards. God’s seeming absence is an exercise of His purpose.
Christ is seeking to fully dwell in us and we in him. By this, God will see the fulfillment of humility, compassion, righteousness, and faith of communion by the power at work within us. Our every way will be spiritually perceptive to God.
Isaiah 43:4
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