How Do You See God?

Close your eyes. Close your mind of all distractions. Think about your answer to this question, right now, in this moment: How do you see God? You’re face to face with Him. What are your feelings? I’m not asking for the right, theological answer, what you learned in Catechism, or how you are supposed to see God. How do you view God, what do you think of when you think of God, right now, in this moment?

Is He there at all? Is He there, but covered by a fog of confusion? Do you know He’s there, but dare not look at Him because of your sins, shame, weaknesses, and unworthiness? Is He angry with you? Is He disappointed in you? Does He care at all? Is He irrelevant? Is He there, but you just can’t seem to find Him?

I have been taught about who God is since the day I was born. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what I know in my head; when I am really honest with myself and answer this question, the God that I close my eyes and see is often so different and so far from the God who is looking down on me with so much love right in this moment.

The root of so many of our problems begins with how we see God. As young men and women, we are under constant pressure to “find ourselves” and figure out who we really are. However, we won’t know who we are until we know Jesus, our maker and our lover and the fulfillment to all of our desires, and know Him as He truly is. I do not think many of us really understand who He is. If we did, the world would be a lot different, because we, especially those that are professing Christ-followers, would all be changing the world.  

I have been struggling lately. I have so much trouble dealing with the pain and emotions of this world, and I am so depressed…I feel like a failure, worthless, hopeless, helpless.

This is part of one of my journal entries from the past year. I think it accurately depicts the deep pain and even deeper thirst that every heart has felt at one time or another. I used to say that life or God or circumstances “broke” me and that’s what got me to that point. But this isn’t true. I was broken already; God doesn’t want to break me more. He allowed Life, the timeless marauder, to pillage and plumage me until all of the things that I held dear, all of my crutches, were gone. When they were gone, I felt worthless, and I despaired. Why? Because my worth wasn’t in Jesus, the Jesus I had thought I had known my whole life. If we ever feel worthless while knowing Jesus, we either don’t know or don’t trust who He really is.

I saw Jesus as someone who was disappointed or frustrated or angry with me and all of my baggage. However, sin doesn’t ‘disappoint’ Jesus in that sense of the word; it wounds Him because He loves us and it separates us from Him. But us coming to Him for forgiveness consoles His sacred heart, and He brings a greater good out of the evil of sin.

Jesus loves us. How many times have we heard that? How many times have we actually understood it? This love goes far deeper than a feeling or an action that the word “love” can justify. It is a thirst. Jesus thirsts for us. He yearns for our love. He makes Himself available all of the time, so that the moment we come to Him, He is right there. He is not a rich prince flippantly granting our requests out of His abundance when we come to Him in prayer. He gives to us until it hurts Him. We are so valuable to Him that He loves us and waits on us and yearns for our love in return as if we are the only person in the world. This is where our worth comes from. Our worth comes from the fact that He loves us, and this love never changes.

The interesting thing is the very next line of my journal entry takes a different tune. I finally heard Jesus’ whispers to my heart that day as I journaled. It goes on to say,

But God made me exactly how He wants me to be.

Think about that for a second. We say that all the time, but do we really understand it? Put your soul up to a mirror and stare at it. Do you like what you see? You are weak. But God made you and me exactly how He wants us to be, weaknesses and all.

When I saw God for who He is, I finally knew what it meant to give thanks for my weaknesses, for how hard it is for me to be holy, for how small of a soul I am: because God will be that much more glorified when He makes me holy.

When I first saw my brokenness, my weaknesses, my failures, it lead me to despair. But that was because I did not or could not see God as someone who was saying “Come to me just as you are, with all of your weaknesses.” A God who thirsted for me to just be with Him, to love Him back, weak as my love was. A God who knew that I was weak, and loved me anyway. A God that, when I dumped all of my heavy suitcases full of sin at the Cross, took joy in forgiving me of my sins. A God that asks me to trust Him, and let Him do the rest. I cannot measure up to the standard of holiness I see before me, but He asks me to trust Him first, and that is something I and anyone else can do.

It was Jesus all along that I was looking for. I was looking for Him in good grades, in boys, in friends, at parties, in approval, in appearances. I saw people on fire for Jesus, people who were changing the world, and I saw them as big souls that I could surely never be. But here again, I wasn’t seeing Jesus for who He was. I do not have to be a big soul to come to Him, I do not have to be strong and perfect for Him to use me. I just have to trust Him, and let Him carry me in His arms up to Heaven and up to holiness. And that makes all of the difference.

“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
—St. John Paul II, Vigil of Prayer – 15th World Youth Day, August 19, 2000