A

Kingdom ways
Transformation Series
Lesson 4: Seeing God with an Unbelieving Heart, Part 2
The Roots of Unbelief
The most important way we all fail to see God is in the most basic love. Few of us had parents who could, and did, take
the initiative to regularly comfort and give affection when we needed it. Some had parents who hugged and kissed only in
front of company or when they felt expansive, but not at times that were appropriate to the signals we gave. We learned to
detest that kind of offer: it exploited us instead of blessed us. Most of the people insist that their parents did not initiate action
appropriate to their needs in childhood, and many complain that their parents never showed affection at all. So we learned to
define love not as a sacrifice, steadfast, daily giving, with sensitivity to what others want, but as some kind of vague sense of
being half-wanted, when someone feels like touching us. That coloured our hearts picture of God, no matter what our minds
learned to think of Him.
The entire Bible is the history of God taking the initiative to come to deliver all mankind and us personally. We see that
basic fact, if we have eyes at all to read. But in the daily practice of devotional life, we strive to reach a God who we actually
think in our hearts may not be listening after all. We feel alone (when we never could be). We dont expect God to be sending
His angels to rescue and His servants to heal before we cry out. Never mind the Scriptures about His leaving the ninety-nine in
the fold (Luke15:4-7): He wouldnt come after me unless I do something first to deserve it. Our dirty hearts see God
clothed in our parents mannerisms. In such areas we are unconverted in heart.
All mankinds history teaches us at our hearts level that God is created in our image instead of the other way around. Our
own personal history, every moment of it, is a fabric by which we see God. All our judgments become coloured
glasses that darken the face of God. No wonders He says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My
ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My
thoughts than your thoughts (Is.55:8-9).
From the moment of our first conversion, the Holy Spirit is given license to work upon our hearts, to reveal and
convict. The Christian life of sanctification and transformation is described in 1John.3:2-3.

Opening Blinded Eyes

Christian pastors, counsellors, and lay leaders are meant to be Gods sharpest tools for that purification and transformation
process to be effected in every believers life. Just as God has raised some priest to be ordained among the priesthood of all
believers, and some prophets to be recognized as such, though we all are, so too He has raised up prayer ministers and
lay leaders who are especially gifted to perceive the practices of the flesh.
However, this work of taking captive areas of the imagination (2Cor.10:4-5) is the work of every brother and sister for
every other brother and sister. How many countless ways do our forgotten judgments prevent us from seeing the true life of
God manifested among us? When a child is faced with parental adulteries, carousing and lies, fear of hearing loud voices in
the night, and violence in his parents lives, what picture of God does that child develop?
Consider how the inability of a father or mother to sympathize or understand portrays Gods nature to the heart: God
wouldnt or couldnt understand me.
Or how does God appear to a child who is always controlled and told that what he thinks is not really what he thinks, or
that his talent is worthless? If he judges his parents, there is no way that child could feel free to assert who and what he is, or
expect that God would be delighted in him and would cherish him for his own talents. So it goes, in myriads of inner
darknesses.
There are more and more areas in which our own forgotten but still active childhood judgments of our
parents have blinded our eyes to God.
Our first conversion has resurrected our inner Lazarus. Now let us be members of that fellowship of Bethany called by
Christ to take the grave clothes off one anothers hands, feet and faces (John 11:44) so we may behold life and walk with Him
and hold His hand.

A Holy Spirit inspired poem:

Im not the same on the outside
as I am on the inside.
I smile, I laugh.
But I dont know joy.
Where is my joy, O my God?
Why have You forsaken me?
Everything was once so free...
Once grass was green,
And hills were pretty.
Now I seem to see them through a veil of gray.
Inside is cold and tight and sad.
I cry and ache. Most days
I long for eyes to see me.
But I hide so well, none can see.
I know its me, but then I think,
They dont care He must not care.
But too long I have known his love,
And I know this is not true.
Yet, I am unable to get above,
And I am sinking slowly in the sands.
Help, I say inside I scream
but on my face, I smile.
Only my eyes express the well
of pain in me.
Im careful not to look at those
who might strip away my mask.
But I want it to come down, at last
Reality to grasp.
I cannot do this for myself.
Am I ready for You at last?
Honesty, we cry,
transparency, and the like.
But who will brave this scary turf?
Ive been brave, Ive tried.
But from openness came pain, from
those who want to close my door,
who trample my little girl.
So light and gay is she, but oh, so sensitive,
and too many times others have driven
her in.
Come out, little girl, I coax, but she just sits and mopes,
No longer can I coax her out.
Are you sleeping, little girl?
Lord, send someone to love her to
life, once more.
-

Anonymous

Amen to that prayer. Lord, send labourers into the harvest. Send prayer ministers and lay leaders to the blind in heart.