EXERCISE 5

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On the blank right side of page 4, describe how God looks to you now. Is He starting to look any different to you? Why or why not? Describe how you feel and what you see in your imagination’s eye about God. Take a moment to write your answer.

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After Jesus was crucified, He arose from the dead and ascended back to the Father. Then, He sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of everyone who would trust His payment for sin, and receive Him as Savior and make Him Lord of their lives. 

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In Acts, chapter 2, once the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the first 120 believers, Peter said that a new era was ushered in: one that fulfilled a prophecy given through the prophet Joel.  Joel prophesied that God would pour His spirit out on “all flesh” and that they would see visions and dream dreams and use prophetic gifts. They would hear God’s voice just like Jesus described in John 10 saying, “My sheep hear My voice and they know Me and they follow Me.”  The blood of Jesus paid for the endowment of spiritual sensitivity to experience God and to draw near to Him.

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Now, if God WERE actually there in our circumstances, what would He look like?  Lets take a look at Genesis 18. It begins with, “The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.”  What?  Here is what is happening in the story. God, in the person of the pre-incarnate Jesus, appeared to Abraham with two angels to have a conversation with him about Sarah having a baby, and about the sins of Sodom. The question is, “Does this happen today and HOW does this happen today?”

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In Acts 18:9, Paul has come to the end of a very bad day where he was almost torn to pieces by an angry mob of people for the sake of the gospel. He had every reason to feel that he got thrown under the bus, didn’t he?  He knows that people are not going to change on a dime and stop attacking him and he is called to keep doing what he is doing. But as we see in Scripture, God knows Paul is struggling, and He knows exactly what to do about it. He gives Paul a vision and Paul has a conversation with the Lord. Verse 11 says, “The night immediately following [the scene with the angry mob], the Lord stood at his side and said, 'Take courage; for as you have solemnly witnessed to My cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also.'” God did this because, although that same mob bound themselves to an oath that they would not eat again until Paul was dead, God put Paul’s nephew outside of the window where they were speaking of their plan about his Uncle Paul. The boy told a Roman Centurion who then arranged for Paul to be escorted to Rome safely.

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Hebrews 1 tells us that after Jesus ascended, He was seated at the Father’s right side. BUT, when you and I accepted Him as Savior and Lord, He put the Holy Spirit inside of us and promised that He [the Holy Spirit] would communicate to us on Jesus’ behalf (John 14:26).  So once the Holy Spirit came to live inside of us, we are then equipped with everything we need to see God, hear God, to know God and receive from God.  

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The question is this: Even if God was there in our unfortunate circumstances, He cannot change what happened to us, can He? Of course not: what is done is done! Even though He is not bound by time, we are! What happened to you was probably bad, perhaps really bad, and that’s a fact. But, because He lives outside of time and space in the eternal now, He can show us where He was in that circumstance, give us the truth from His eternal perspective, and redeem that event for us. Did He not say in John 8:32 that we would know the truth and that the truth would set us free? He is the One who redeems our lives from destruction. He is the only One who can, but the fact is that HE CAN and He wants to do this for us.