Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
LORD, reveal yourself to us and love us. We look around us and don't see everyone flocking to you. We don't see everyone following you. We wonder and so we ask "Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?" But this is not the plan. You tell us that the Father loves whoever loves you, not just a select few.
But Jesus, how can we love you before you reveal yourself? You are constantly active around us and yet we say, "The gods have come down to us in human form." We attribute your power in the world to chance or to idols. Idols of the environment, of science, of our own intellectual prowess dominate our thoughts about what matters in the world. We see things like the miracle in Acts:
"Stand up straight on your feet."
He jumped up and began to walk about.
We are much more ready to believe that this is done by some human power rather than the power of God. We are all too ready to offer sacrifice to idols rather than thanks to God. We thank fortune and chance rather than the hand of providence.
So how can we love you, LORD? We don't see you well enough. We need your revelation to teach us. We need you to first help us say, "Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory." Then we are disentangled from the world and are free to love you.
The secret is the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. He places your words in our hearts. He reminds us of who you are and all you tell us. He makes your words remain in our hearts and empowers us to love you. When the Advocate is in our hearts speaking to us we love you and experience you revealing yourself to us. It isn't that we love you first. You love us before we even really know you. You love us while we are yet sinners. But you cannot reveal yourself in the way you want or as deeply as you want until we allow your love to have its way in us. We cannot know you unless we give your Holy Spirit room in our hearts to remind us of all you tell us.
The pagans shouldn't have room to say, "Where is their God?" You want to be so present in our lives that your mercy and your truth reveal your glory to the world. You want to speak words into our daily lives and be so present to us moment to moment that the whole world can't help but see that you are the living God.
Our God is in heaven;
whatever he wills, he does.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the handiwork of men.
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