Just imagine for a moment that in times of struggle God allowed you to peek behind the celestial firmament and visually watch Him take care of business. In other words, He allowed you to literally witness how He causes all things to work together for your good and His glory.
Undoubtedly, many if not all of us would be a little more comfortable navigating through our earthly valleys.
Unfortunately, God doesn’t always hand out backstage passes so when hard times come, it can be easy for Satan to distract us from seeing what God is doing in our lives. And in the midst of it all, the devil wants us to focus on what we can see—all of our troubles and fears in the moment—more than what God is doing on our behalf through our struggle(s) behind closed curtains.
Having said that, although we can’t always see God move with our natural eyes we can pray for God to open our spiritual eyes. Throughout his epistles the Apostle Paul talked about seeing the unseen a lot. In his letter to the Church in Ephesus, he wrote: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe…”(Ephesians 1:18-19 NIV).
So we have physical eyes that we use to see the world around us, but we also have spiritual eyes, or the “eyes of our heart,” that give us an awareness of spiritual things that are invisible to the natural eye. Those spiritual things are our “glorious inheritance” that Paul is talking about it.
Sadly, we are so accustomed to only believing what we see right in front of us with our natural sight. If we don’t see God doing something, then we assume He’s not doing anything. But the truth is, He’s always working, and if we’ll just believe that and keep our hope in Him, then we will see evidence of His work in His time and His way. Job 34:20 of the Message paraphrase put it this way, “……..we know God is working behind the scenes.”
I get it! It’s difficult at times to trust God more than what we see right in front of us. You might be thinking, Lowell, it’s just too much—I can’t even begin to see Him in all this. And you’re right! On our own, you’ll never be able to discern how God is working in your life.
That’s why He’s provided us with the Helper (see John 14:26-27 ESV). You see, when we accept Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside us—God literally gives each one of us a little piece of Himself.
My brothers and sisters, I just want to encourage you to stop and think several times a day, God is working in my life, God is working on my problem, and God is working on my loved ones. Be full of hope. And no matter what you do—no matter what you see or don’t see—always remember that God is gonna work it out, even if you can’t see Him working!
4GIVEN 