Day 57 - Visible Signs of An Invisible God

That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIVUK)

Working in electronics gives me a bit of an unfair advantage over many Christians as it involves continual faith and daily reliance on something that is essentially invisible. In fact, electricity only manifests itself when it is detected by a piece of test equipment or a device or machine operating correctly. Less welcome manifestations include blowing up something (sometimes spectacularly!) or getting a nasty electric shock if you touch the wrong thing - and yes, I have experienced both over the years!

In fact, we are surrounded by many invisible things that manifest themselves with the right equipment. The power running in our cables, the WiFi signals linking our many devices or the radio waves coming into our radio or even the Earth’s magnetic field. We all have both faith and confidence that when we turn on the light switch, the light will come on.

Yet many have difficulty in believing in an invisible heavenly realm and an invisible heavenly God.

The Bible says that all people have been given a sign of the existence and agency of God. Creation itself should point us to a creator who both brought it into being and continuously maintains it. The elegance, extravagance and precision of it’s design at the atomic and galactic scales are truly a wonder.

These signs have a deeper significance to us, where our spiritual eyes have been opened to the power, character and nature of the God who spoke the whole of creation into being.

In fact, we have been given other signs and alternative means to interact with the eternal kingdom. These include the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - who both directs us and teaches us about God’s nature and fills us with inexpressible joy as we worship and give thanks. Prayer allows us to be both influenced by God and to be blessed as we see His timely response to our holy requests.

We also experience our faith being built up as we exercise our faith in Jesus, whom Paul calls the physical image of the invisible God.

Hebrews talks about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt because he ‘saw’ the one who is invisible. We see Elisha praying that the spiritual eyes of his servant be ‘opened’ so that he might also ‘see’ God’s horses and chariots of fire surrounding the invading army!

We typically have more confidence in what we can see and touch, yet the Bible says that those things are only temporary. They will all pass away in time. Therefore, we should consider the things that we cannot see as being more significant than the spiritual kingdom they we cannot see, which will never pass away.

So what are these eternal things? Through faith in Jesus we have eternal salvation and redemption into an eternal covenant with an eternal inheritance in an eternal home, (not built by human hands) in an eternal Kingdom with an eternal God.

The alternative is eternal judgement in an eternal fire, bound by eternal chains. I know where I would prefer to be!

The Bible only talks about one other thing that is temporary (apart from all of the visible realm!) and that is our present suffering. So if we are suffering in our present situation due to illness, infirmity, opposition or being overwhelmed by world events, we should remember that these things are but temporary and will be replaced by God’s eternal kingdom. This is the hope we hold on to by faith.

Steve Horton