The Fog is Lifting and the Sun is Shining

Can You See God Clearly?

     There is a moment in most people's lives when the fog lifts, even briefly, and something that was once murky becomes unmistakably plain. That moment of clarity is rare and precious. But what if the most important kind of clarity we could ever pursue is not about our circumstances, our relationships, or our future plans, but about God himself?  What if the greatest obstacle standing between us and a meaningful life is simply that we have never truly seen him for who he is?
This is a question worth sitting with.

The Filters We Bring

     Every person who has ever thought about God has done so through a lens shaped by their upbringing, their experiences, their personality, and their pain. We do not come to the question of God as blank slates. We come loaded with assumptions, impressions, and sometimes wounds that quietly distort our view before we even begin.
Consider the four basic human temperaments. The choleric person, confident and strong-willed, tends to see God primarily as a commanding, all-powerful authority. The sanguine person, easy-going and optimistic, gravitates toward a God who simply wants everyone to be happy. The phlegmatic person, steady and patient, sees a God who never changes. The melancholic person, detail-oriented and precise, sees a God who knows every hair on every head and keeps careful account of everything. Each of these perspectives reflects something genuinely true about God. But none of them, standing alone, gives the full picture. When we lock God into the frame of our own personality, we end up with a version of him that is more about us than about him.
The same distortion happens when we see God through our fathers. If your earthly father was harsh and critical, you may have grown up imagining God as someone waiting to catch you in a mistake. If your father was indulgent and permissive, you may have come to expect God to give you whatever you ask for, and to feel personally offended when he does not. If your father was distant and uninvolved, you may have quietly concluded that God is a remote and impersonal force who has little interest in the details of your life.
None of these pictures is accurate. But they are remarkably common.

The Danger of a Small God
     When we reduce God to fit our personality, our history, or our preferences, we are not simply making a theological error. We are cutting ourselves off from the very source of clarity, peace, and purpose that we desperately need. Paul addressed this tendency directly in 2 Corinthians 10:12, where he warned against the foolishness of measuring ourselves by ourselves and comparing ourselves among ourselves. The habit of using ourselves as the standard, whether for evaluating other people or for imagining God, leads us away from truth rather than toward it.
     The media compounds this problem. God is routinely portrayed in popular culture as either a cosmic vending machine, a judgmental tyrant, or an irrelevant relic. People who have never opened a Bible form their deepest impressions of God from movies, television, and social media, and those impressions are almost always wrong. The tragic result is that millions of people reject a God who does not actually exist, while the real God, patient, personal, and powerful, goes unknown.

What Isaiah Saw
     The prophet Isaiah had a moment of shattering, transformative clarity recorded in Isaiah 6. The king had died. The political landscape was uncertain. The future was unclear. It was in that moment of confusion and upheaval that Isaiah saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and lifted up, surrounded by angelic beings crying out that the whole earth is full of his glory.
What happened to Isaiah in that moment is a pattern worth tracing carefully, because it is the same pattern available to anyone who genuinely seeks to see God clearly.
First, there was confusion. Isaiah was disoriented by the death of a good king and the uncertainty of what came next. It is often precisely in our seasons of confusion, when the comfortable structures of life fall away, that we become genuinely open to seeing something we have never seen before. Chaos has a way of clearing out the noise and making us receptive.
     Second, there was confession. When Isaiah saw God as he truly is, his immediate response was not pride or confidence. It was a deep, overwhelming awareness of his own sinfulness. He declared that he was undone, a man of unclean lips living among unclean people. A clear view of God always produces a clear view of ourselves. Not a view designed to crush us, but one that is honest enough to show us what we actually need.
     Third, there was change. A seraphim touched Isaiah's lips with a coal from the altar, and his guilt was removed. This is the movement of grace. When we stop defending ourselves and honestly acknowledge what we are, God moves toward us. He does not wait for us to clean ourselves up first. He meets us in the confession and begins the transformation there.
     Fourth, there was commitment. Isaiah heard the voice of God asking who would go, and he answered without hesitation. Real commitment, the kind that lasts, is not a decision made in a moment of emotional enthusiasm. It is a submission, an acknowledgment that God knows and we do not, and a willingness to be led by him into whatever he has prepared.

A Clearer View, Starting Now

     You cannot go back and undo the choices that have brought you to where you are. But you can start now and have a completely different ending. The eternal life described in scripture, in John 3:16 and throughout the New Testament, is not something to be earned or achieved through a long list of requirements. It is a gift, offered freely, grounded in what God has already done through Jesus Christ.
The sun is shining. The obstacles can be moved. The clouds do not have to stay.
Can you see God clearly today?