Have You Seen Him?

"My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."  Job 42:5

Have you seen the Grand Canyon?  Me neither.  But I hear great things, and the pictures other people have taken and the stories they tell are great.  But I haven't seen it.  All I know is that it's really big.  Still, those who've seen it in person remember in awe at what they saw. They say, "You have to see it in person!  There's nothing like it." 

Until you've experienced something for yourself, you can only guess what it is really like.  All you have to go on is comparisons of what you've previously experienced.  So I ask, have you seen God?  Have you experienced Him for yourself?  Do you have a firsthand faith in Him, or are you relying on other people's word, living off of another man's faith?  Friends and family are great for showing us pictures of God, but don't you want to trade in what you've heard and experience your own truth?  Do you believe that you can have a personal relationship with Him?

Moses' prayer to God was, "...teach me Your ways so I may know You..." (Exodus 33:13).  Moses wanted to know God firsthand, to see Him.  Moses gives us great insight as to how to know God:
   1.  Ask Him - if you want your wife to pass the salt, you ask her. 
   2.  Follow the ways He has laid out for us
The statutes of God are not simply rules to suppress us like some angry dictator.  They are designed to keep us on track to knowing Him fully. 

God wants to know you.  By the "good pleasure of His will" He has adopted us as children (Ephesians 1:5).  Have you seen Him for yourself?  Do you know your own Father?  Where has your picture of God come from - is it one somebody gave you as a "postcard", or did you take the picture yourself?  Ask Him to show you Himself and I promise that He won't deny you.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." - Matthew 7:7