God is Revealing Himself to You

Do you know how much God loves you? He loves you so much that he reveals himself to you in various and unmistakable ways so that you can know him.

More than anything, God wants a relationship with us. He created us to be his family. To have a genuine relationship with anyone, we must move to a deep level of knowing. What is important to the person? What pleases him? What motivates his decisions and actions? What is in his heart?

For us to know God, he must reveal these things about himself. And he does! Jesus said, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him” (John 14:21). Because of God’s love for us, he reveals himself so we can know him. Here are some ways he does that.

God reveals himself in nature. Created things reflect the essence of their creator. God is the Creator of all nature, and nature speaks to us of the One who formed it. David beautifully expressed this truth in a song.

“The heavens declare the glory of God;
     the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
     night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
     no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
     their words to the ends of the world.”  (Psalm 19:1-4)

Have you ever gazed into the night sky filled with a myriad of distant stars and planets and tried to imagine how far the universe extends? Have you stood on a beach and searched unsuccessfully for where the ocean ends? Through nature, God gives us a glimpse into his immensity.

In nature we also see God’s unlimited creativity. For example, over 33,000 fish species swim in waters worldwide and over 73,000 different tree species cover our globe. We see evidence of his excellent workmanship everywhere. His orderliness is displayed in the movement of bodies in our solar system and the changing of the seasons.

In these and numerous other ways, creation reveals its Creator to mankind. “¹⁹What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20).

God reveals himself through Scripture. All the Bible was given to us by God (2 Timothy 3:16). We may think it’s a history of people, beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. It tells of kings and wars, the leaders of the early church, and genealogies. But we mistake it as being about us when it is really about God.  I’ve heard the Bible referred to as “His story.” The Bible is not about people; it is about God in the lives of people. God is always the focus, always the main character. All through the Scriptures, God reveals his character, his motives, his glory so we can know him.

God reveals himself through Jesus. Jesus is God (Matthew 1:23). That is why Jesus could say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). We don’t have to wonder what God is like. We have eyewitness accounts from those who walked closely with Jesus when he lived on earth. If we want to know God, we have only to study the life of Jesus and get to know him—because if we know him, we will know his Father.

If God has so clearly revealed himself to mankind through nature, the Scriptures, and the life of his Son, why doesn’t everyone see him? He states a condition through the prophet Jeremiah. “¹³‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:13-14). We have to want to see him.

According to Lee Strobel in The Miracles Answer Book, this condition demonstrates God’s love for us. If we seek him wholeheartedly, we will see the evidence he has given us, which leads us to believe in him. This is what he wants. This is why he reveals himself to us. But because he loves us, he will also never force our acceptance of him. He even allows people the freedom to choose to “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). Strobel says, “God seems to avoid making his presence so clear that he overwhelms us and removes our ability to resist him if we wish to” (p.131).

God reveals who he is to all men. He displays his glory throughout creation. In his Word, he shares his story from before time to eternity. And he sacrificed his Son Jesus to leave his home in heaven and come to earth so you could relate to him and know him. If you seek him with your whole heart and ask him to open your eyes, he will not hesitate to reveal his heart to you.

That’s how much God loves you!

Scripture quotations are from NIV.

Feature photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash