When we think about God, we use our human minds to try and understand Him. But as amazing as they are, they can only go so far. Our minds are finite and God is infinite. We live in time and space. God lives outside of time and is a Spirit that’s everywhere all at once. He’s bigger in every way than anything we could ever imagine. So can we actually know Him? Back to that in a bit.
Because we’re human, we can only understand the bigger picture of what’s true indirectly. For example, if it wasn’t for the news reporting what’s happening on the other side of our planet, we would never know about it. When I travel – whether to another country, state, a new part of Los Angeles, or even a few miles down the road – I often think, “Wow. All of this is going on and I never knew it existed! When I leave, it will continue without me as if I was never there.” Have you felt that way? That’s an example of how much more there is to know than we can possibly experience with our human limitations.
We can only be in just one place, a sliver of perspective at a time. We don’t know it all and we never will. When I visited one of the plains states in the middle of the U.S. awhile back, I’d forgotten how flat the land was. There were no mountains or even hills to define distance. I kept wishing I had a super tall ladder to see what was beyond my view to something…else. It was hard to gauge where I really was.
When we stop to think about it, our own day-to-day world is actually a small circumference. Without being provided with information beyond it, we can’t know the whole story. When some people think they have all the answers in their little king or queendom and that’s all there is or ever will be, it’s an incomplete reality. One of the main reasons people reject that God is real is because they don’t “read the news” about what’s going on in the spiritual world. As I mentioned before, we couldn’t know what was happening beyond our own life without someone telling us there’s more. In the same way, we can’t know about God without reading His Word, the Holy Bible.
At the beginning, I asked a question. If God is beyond the comprehension of our human minds to understand or imagine, can we actually know Him? Well…He provided a way to do just that. He came to us! Whether you’re a believer or not, you’ve likely heard that God is three in one: the Trinity. But what does that really mean? According to the Bible, He is eternally: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit at the same time. So when God the Father sent God the Son (Jesus), it was actually God who was born in a manger and became fully man while remaining fully God. Why would He do that? He became like one of us to teach us, show us who He is, and live a life like ours, but without sin because He is holy. His motivation was love for us. When Jesus died on the cross, His blood and sacrifice of Himself was the payment for your sins and mine. God paid the price and built the bridge for us. He rose again to show us that only He has the power to conquer death so if we accept His free gift of salvation and forgiveness of our sins, we’ll have eternal life through Him – Jesus – and go to Heaven where He is right now. We’ll join Him after we take our last breath.
Here’s what it says in 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV):
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
That’s true perspective, provided to us by God. He’s preserved His personal message to us in the Bible for thousands of years. The word gospel means Good News – and it is! It tells us how life began in Genesis all the way through Revelation which tells us that Jesus is coming again and the best is yet to come, by far!. Otherwise, we would never know. But He gave the truth to anyone who will listen! That’s why it’s beyond important that we ALL read and study it to know what it says for ourselves. It’s for EVERYONE, for all time. It’s time to stop looking through broken lenses and our transient culture and see clearly with God’s eternal perspective.
RESET HIGHER: What stood out to you as you read this? Did it clarify your perspective about your life and how the pieces of God’s plan fit perfectly together? Do you think people in our world who are lost and struggling need a higher perspective? If you have the love of God in your heart and the light of His Word to give, shine it and share it!
