To Visualize the Unseen

John 17:24-26

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Jan and I went on holiday to New Zealand with our friends the Whitehouse’s, and it’s beauty, variety in terrain and in plants, and was what I would envision the Garden of Eden must have looked like.  And often my thoughts went to “I wish” that my daughter and her family could see this, or my mother and mother-in-law would have enjoyed this so much.  It was one of those vacations you wanted all your family and friends to see, to be there with you.  What a pale example to the text above, when Jesus made this request of the Father: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

I have believed for sometime that one of the things the enemy of our soul has hijacked from us is the wonderful ability to imagine, to visualize the unseen, and the deeper things of God.  As a child who came from an under resourced family; now lets be very clear we had a radio, but no television till I was in my teens.  With that radio came an imagination that was able to see in living color and in three dimensions.  My mind had the ability to form images, to see something that was not there, and to assume what the producer of the show wanted me to see.  What a blessing! Then came television and I no longer needed my imagination, and it has only gotten worse; so how are we going to understand Jesus telling us about the foundation of the world, and the glory He had with the Father?

I came to understand that I needed help, because reality is not in what is seen according to the apostle Paul, but what is unseen, “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18 ESV)  It has become very clear that help is needed to take back what has been stolen and God has provided a helper.  “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (John 15:26 ESV)  So as you look into these things, ask the Spirit of Truth to give you the ability to see what others cannot see because they have made a choice to not believe in the Son or the Father.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice