My Eyes Have Seen You

August 29

Job 40-42

Psalm 98:4-9

Proverbs 21:16-17

Galatians 4

My Eyes Have Seen You

“Then Job answered Yahweh and said, ‘I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted…I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You;  Therefore I reject myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.” 

Job 42:1-2, 5-6 LSB

Yesterday we looked at God’s response to Job.  Today we will see how Job responded after God answered him.  God’s response had the intended effect on Job.  He recognized the reality of his situation.  Job was able to see clearly who God is.  His eyes were opened.  I love that he said, “I had heard of You before but now my eye sees You.”  In other words, “I knew about You. People had told me about You.  I have heard of all the things You have done and I believed You were all powerful and all knowing, but now I have seen it for myself.”  We each need to come to that place in our lives as well.  We may have heard about God our whole lives. People have told us about all the things He has done.  We have read the Bible stories and believe them, but when we see Him at work in our own lives it’s different.  When the reality of who He is and who we are in relation to Him hits us, it changes everything.  At that point, we can own our faith.  Until then we may believe what others tell us, we may faithfully follow the “rules” and do all the things we are supposed to do, but the conviction and certainty isn’t there. 

While He obviously isn’t in human form so we can’t physically see Him, we can nonetheless see His work in our lives when He answers our prayers, when He delivers us from a difficult situation, when He gives us peace beyond our comprehension, and when He provides us with wisdom and guidance.  We can know His still small voice when it speaks to us and we can feel His presence in our lives in a palpable, discernable way.  Job made the distinction that we need to make.  There is a difference between hearing about God and seeing God.  An intellectual understanding of God is very different from a personal revelation of Him.  There are many people who know all about God, who have studied the Bible and can quote scripture and tell you what it means, but they do not have a personal relationship with the God of the Bible.  Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  I am not contradicting this verse.  The “seeing” that Job experienced and that I am talking about is not physical sight, but rather spiritual sight.  We cannot physically know that it was God that answered our prayers or helped us out of a difficult situation.  We can’t provide proof that He is the One that protected us from danger or that the peace we feel was divine intervention.  There is an element of faith required to believe.  But what I am suggesting is that when you experience the presence of God and His intervention in your life, it results in a spiritual awakening that changes you.  It deepens your faith and gives you a certainty and conviction that will sustain and strengthen you through whatever you face.  Have your eyes seen God?