Do You Want To See God?

Do you want to see God?

A simple question with a seemingly obvious answer. The question is not as straightforward as it may seem yet it's answer lies at the heart of this week’s beatitude. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.” 

Pastor Ben posed a series of questions stemming from this short phrase, and suggested that if we work backwards from the blessing of seeing God, we can better understand what it means to be pure in heart.

A pure heart holds pure motives. A pure heart wants to see God, for the simple joy of being in His presence...not because of what He can provide. Many seekers have confused the two. And many, if they were honest, would have to admit that what they seek is not to see God but to be seen by Him. 

“Do you want to see God?” is therefore a fair question, though it surely seems self-evident. Whoever would say “no” to this?? Jesus asked a similarly obvious question of the invalid who had been laying by the Pool of Bethesda awaiting healing for 38 years. The account is found in John 5:1-15 and verse 6 reads,

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him ‘do you want to get well?’”

Why would Jesus ask this? Of course a sick person wants to get well! Except sometimes, for a host of very complicated reasons, they really don’t. The question cuts much deeper than the surface and calls for introspection. In the same way, not all of us truly want to see God. We may claim that we do, but God knows our hearts and it is our hearts that He covets. 

Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Indeed, how can we assess the purity of our own hearts?? How do we honestly answer the question, “do we want to see God?”

Jesus gives us the instrument by which to measure our hearts. In the Sermon on the Mount, He instructs us to take stock of our treasures and implores us to look beyond earthly treasures to those that can be stored in heaven. Matthew 5:21 reads, 

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. 

The things that we treasure are a direct reflection of the state of our hearts. They are the things that we really want. Do our treasures reflect a heart that truly wants to see God? The rich young ruler thought he wanted to see God until Jesus helped him identify what he really valued. God was not his treasure. He was not of the blessed “pure in heart”.

Our charge from this sermon is to grapple with the issue of what we really want; to ascertain the deepest desire of our heart. Not what we say we want but what we really want. As followers of Christ, we should aspire to a heart that can honestly and increasingly express what the psalmist David did…

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek Him in His temple.” (Ps. 27:4)

Simple. Beautiful. Unadulterated. This is the very definition of pure in heart.

~ Melissa Gibbs has been a member of LIFE Fellowship for over 10 years, is the mother of four boys and the widow of the late JD Gibbs.