God Sees You

I pulled into a parking space in the shrouded darkness of the large garage overhang looming overhead. The first time I came here, I couldn’t believe how massive this structure was… all these people come to this church? My first time here was in 2005 with my mom, dad, and sisters. I remember worship including a harp and I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen during a church service in my entire life… well, that and the fact that we were sitting in balcony seats. McLean Bible was the church recommended to us by our pastor back in Indiana before we moved east. We only went one time because the 45 minute drive was too long for three young girls and their tired parents. But fast forward 11 years and there I was, living with my brand new husband just 5 minutes down the road from McLean Bible.

I loved it there. We made friends, went to Thursday night Bible study, and attended the young adult Sunday evening service when we could. What I loved about McLean was the basis in Scripture. We’d dive into verses that aren’t necessarily ones you’d like to have pasted on your mirror staring back at you every morning as you’re getting ready for work. We talked about the tough stuff… and I always walked away feeling closer to Jesus. You can imagine how sad I was to lose being so close to this church when we left Tysons last spring… it was one of the hardest parts of leaving.

Up until yesterday afternoon, I hadn’t stepped foot inside McLean Bible since the week before we moved. I’d plan on it somedays and then something would come up, or I’d check the traffic and it’d be a 52 minute drive and it just didn’t seem worth the time in the car. Looking back, I should have just gone. Of course it would have been worth it! But I told myself we had a church here, and even if I missed my friends, I’m sure I’d be back someday and see them again. That day came yesterday when I was sitting on the couch and randomly thought to text my friend Julie about whether Sunday evening young adult service was happening and if she’d be going. Turns out, no, it’s no longer a young adult service, but Nate the young adult pastor would be preaching in an hour if I wanted to make the 1pm. I didn’t have to think about it. I grabbed my keys, loaded Google Maps (only 35 minutes!), and turned on some worship music.

I don’t know what made me so thirsty for this. What I do know is when you fill yourself up with all the wrong things, your hunger is never satisfied. You’re never fulfilled. There’s always something missing. When I start my day checking how many messages and likes I got overnight, I’m stumbling forward on the wrong foot. It’s like trying to eat candy for every meal… it tastes good, even sweet, but the damage of having nothing but that over and over again will eventually kill you. I like how it feels when I have it, but if it’s where I’m turning 52 times a day vs. elsewhere… I have to question if I’m really feeding myself good things.

Be honest with yourself for the next few minutes.

How do you feel when you open the Bible?
When you wake up on Sunday morning and think, “I could go to church…”
When you scroll past a Christian article on Facebook?
How do you feel when you remember how long it’s been since you’ve prayed?

My answers? They don’t make me look very good. But maybe that’s the problem: we’re all a little too focused on looking good. When I asked my Instagram followers last Friday how many hours they spend on the app each week, the numbers didn’t surprise me. I don’t think they surprised anyone. Appalled, yes. Made us all feel a little ashamed/embarrassed? Yes. We should be ashamed if we’re spending 12 hours a week refreshing an app to check likes and see what people we don’t even know in real life are up to. Why do we worship this? Why do we worship ourselves?

Let’s go back to those questions. I want to give you my answer to one of them in contrast to how I feel when I open my iPhone, particularly a social media app. Ugh. Here goes nothing.

How I feel when I open the Bible? “What am I going to feel convicted about today? This is hard. I don’t want to do this. What if this isn’t even real? When is the last time I really heard from God? Remember that one article you read written by an atheist. This is silly. You can be doing better things. More fun things. This requires work, you already work hard enough. It’s not that big of a deal. Just relax for a while. Let’s do this later.”

How I feel when I open my phone? “I can’t wait to see how many likes that photo got. How many messages do I have? Oh I hope a lot of people responded to that. Impact!! I’m having such a great impact on the world. I stand for the right things. I’m making a difference. Oh, look at that! 232 likes and 14 messages. Yep. Making waves!! I’m so proud of myself. This feels great. Let’s check again in 5 minutes.”

…if that’s not proof of spiritual warfare, I don’t know what is.

It is life or death getting you to open that Bible. It’s a battle against evil to get out of bed, get in the car, and drive to church. If you don’t realize or believe that, they’ve already won.

The message at church yesterday was fitting to say the least (you can listen to it here). After calling myself out on Instagram and trying to limit my time on my phone this weekend, I wanted to be at church. There’s so much more time in the day when I’m not laying on the couch “relaxing” on my phone or laptop or Netflix! I was itching to go somewhere, anywhere, so yea, I guess church works. I did just say on Friday that I hadn’t been to church in a while… I could go and let everyone know that I’m making progress!

I walked into the lobby, hugged a few friends, and sat down inside. Was that a blowtorch on stage? No, it’s just Powerade with a straw. Nate started, “In true young adult pastor fashion, I brought a blowtorch on stage with me today.” Oh. Okay. This should be interesting.

“Our world today is content to have a casual relationship with God, which leads to casual obedience… which is really disobedience. If you’re saying no to God, when did you stop caring about His consequences? When did you stop fearing the Lord?”

Busted. 

Countless mornings I’ve reached for my iPhone over my Bible. Every time I do it, I know I’m doing it! It’s a conscious decision to say, “Um, yea I guess not today. Tomorrow. It’s seriously fine. Not a big deal.”

How many sins do we dismiss in the same way? It’s not a big deal. I’ll do something different tomorrow. God loves me. He forgives me. It’s seriously fine. 

Bring in the blowtorch. “God is like this flame. He has the power to do good, to bring comfort, warmth, and life… but He also has the power to destroy. If we don’t approach Him with care and reverence, we’re walking into fire.”

I loved the illustration. I’d never seen or heard God described like this before… but Scripture backs it up. “Worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). It’s easy to dismiss God, the idea of him even. We live in the HERE and NOW, with living breathing people around us… if we can’t touch it or feel it, it’s not real. Right?

But couldn’t we say the same thing about Instagram? 

We can’t touch the recognition, the follower count. We can’t feel the hearts changing color as the likes come in. But we worship it all the same. And what good does it do, really? Yet we don’t worship God because He isn’t “real enough” for us.

I have a list I keep in my head and heart of moments where I’ve seen God in my life. The time I was 8 years old and crying, lost alone at a fair and didn’t have a way of finding anyone yet looked down and saw two quarters stacked on top of each other right next to me so I could use the pay phone to call home. The time I thought to myself “one of those old cassette tapes would be really cool to bring home” as we were cleaning up rubble in Haiti and they came and cleared all the trash away and all the tapes were gone but a little boy came up and tapped me and handed me a single cassette tape. The time that while I was praying about whether I should marry Justin, a mentor had a vision of Justin and me at a castle a month before we got engaged at a castle (I held on to that so dearly and still do). The countless text messages I’ve gotten at just the right time talking to me about things I’d been praying and wrestling through for months without saying a word to anyone.

I had another one of those moments yesterday. I want more of them, but they only come when I’m fully and wholeheartedly seeking God. Really, truly needing him. 

The sermon ended and in my conviction I prayed that God would help me draw closer to Him. I didn’t want to be casual and flippant about this anymore. There’s no excuse. It is a big deal that I hadn’t been to church or Bible study in months. That I’d consistently and repeatedly and without fail opened my phone more than I’d opened his word. I’d cared more about likes and comments than my prayer life. It wasn’t okay, and Satan was winning. Not anymore.

They played a final worship song and I recognized the first few notes immediately. I couldn’t place the exact song and then I realized… it was the song I’d walked down the aisle to. Our wedding song. A song I hadn’t heard or listened to since our wedding day two years ago. I completely lost it.

It might not make sense to you or even sound like anything special. But this song… it’s an old song. It isn’t one that’s normally in worship rotation all that often anymore. It’s one I spent countless evenings listening to, envisioning the moment we’d finally be married on our wedding day, over and over again to get me through the 7 years we waited for that. The 7 years we waited for God’s perfect timing. It was my anthem, my fight song in the battle to wait for marriage and keep our relationship centered on and rooted in Christ because I knew in my heart of hearts that was what was right and good and what God intended for us. This song was so special to me that I haven’t listened to it since our wedding day because I know how much it will make me cry from the memory of that moment that was SO full of joy. That song, I played it for myself for years, but I played it for our 120 closest family and friends because I want them to know Jesus. I was so proud to know Jesus in that moment. To be starting our marriage with him.

“Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder, at the mention of your name. Jesus your name is power, breath and living water, such a marvelous mystery.” Marriage is a marvelous and beautiful and wonderful mystery, just like our relationship with the living and breathing God we can often only touch with our minds and hearts and souls in this dimension. Those words bring life to me. God knows how much that song means. What are the chances they’d play it the first time I step foot in this building in almost 18 months? I don’t know, but I do know what I felt in that moment. Tears ran down my cheeks, dropping onto the pages of my journal on my lap and smearing my words into puddles of ink. I’ll never forget how loved I felt in that moment.

So today, I’m choosing to cling to the truth that God brings me more life and fulfillment than any amount of time or effort on Instagram ever could. The things of this world are so fleeting and meaningless… whether you believe in God or not, we all know how short this life is, and my faith is priceless to me. It brings a depth to my days I can’t describe. When God shows up so clearly in my life like in those moments I shared above, or something as simple as a song I haven’t heard in two years. The darkness of our sinful human condition may separate us from him in this world, but I know I won’t be separated from him in the next.

Hoping for that is everything.