21st January 2021

Relationship with an invisible God?

“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
John 4:24 (NIV)

How can we have a relationship with an invisible God? As practising Christians we do things that appear weird to unbelievers: we regularly talk to someone we call God, or Father, who apparently isn’t there! And He never speaks back! We call this prayer – others call it crazy. And if God ever did speak back to us during our prayers, we would probably faint!

There is no end of things we discuss with God including giving Him thanks, making requests, and asking for forgiveness for something called ‘sins’. We regularly ask Him to send His Son, Jesus, back to earth to do away with all the worldly governments and set up His kingdom! In addition to all of this, we talk about having a ‘relationship’ with Jesus, but He never speaks audibly to us and never physically acknowledges our presence. So, how can we describe what this relationship is really like? Let’s have a try:

1. God is spirit. We do not see the wind during a stormy day but we do not doubt its existence when we see the effects it can have. Similarly, we believe God to be the creator of all—all seeing, all knowing, and all present, as well as being invisible. In this capacity we worship Him as opposed to worshipping the wind, or indeed any other person or thing on earth or in the heavens. Jesus said, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know…Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (John 4:22-23, emphasis mine).

2. God became a man in the person of Jesus. This is the fundamental core of our Christian faith. We believe He lived, died, and was resurrected to graciously atone for our sins. God, the Creator, reached out to His creation in a unique and personal way. Jesus is no longer with us physically, on earth, as He was 2000 years ago, yet the fact remains that God lived a human life among us. When we pray and study the Scriptures, this is a God we can relate to, who understands what it is like to be human.

3. We believe through faith. French philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal says, ‘In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.’¹

Let us continue in the light which God has granted us, and worship Him in spirit and in truth.

¹Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets, Blaise Pascal.

Study by Bob Beggs

 

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for revealing your Son to us, and for the amazing grace bestowed upon us by His life, death, and resurrection. Help us to continue to worship you in spirit and truth, thereby building up a close and loving relationship with your Son, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, amen.

 

 

About the writer:
Bob Beggs is an Elder and member of the Pastoral Council at Grace Communion Lisburn, in Northern Ireland.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion Lisburn
(www.grace-ni.org)
Ballymacbrennan School House
129A Saintfield Road
LISBURN
BT27 5PG

Meeting time:
Sunday 11am

Local Congregational Contact:
Bob Beggs
Email: bobbeggs@hotmail.com