December 12: invisible

"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”*

Science can't measure God. It can't put Him into a test tube or under a microscope. It can't measure His strength or mercy, it can't calculate his size, it can't locate heaven. God is the Author of Life, the Creator of the Universe, Maker of Heaven and Earth. We can look at His creation and learn about His character, and we can get to know him in person through his son, but we can't find him through scientific experimentation.

**

"My God's not dead

He's surely alive

He's living on the inside

Roaring like a lion"

Just because God is 'living on the inside' and not able to be discovered and tested like the created world doesn't mean he's dead or imaginary! Why does everything have to be like us? Why do we have to put things in boxes and categorise and fully understand things?

The invisible God chose to reveal himself, and of all the ways he could have done that He chose to become a person! So that people could relate to him, understand him, recognise him, learn from him, imitate him. Back in the days of King Herod and the Roman Empire, you could have gone to Galilee and found him; Jesus of Nazareth. Now we have the Holy Spirit helping us to recognise the man who is God. We find Him in the Bible.

"Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”***

The challenge is to learn to recognise the voice of God, the sound of Jesus, the tone of the Spirit. I want to follow the true Good Shepherd, who leads his sheep. I want to listen to his voice alone and never follow a strangers voice. I can't do that if I am not familiar to God's voice. How can we tell what is truth and what is a part truth, or an outright lie? Usually we have to see what the character of the person is, are they reliable, are they following through on what they say?

"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”***

Jesus lay down glory to be a man, and he laid down his life freely for us! And he also took up life again, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father in glory. If we convince ourselves that God is dead, that he is unreliable and cruel, then we can't learn to recognise his voice. I firmly believe Jesus is the Truth, but I am still learning to recognise and respond faithfully to it. He speaks, and is active today "on the inside".

*John 4:24
**Newsboys -"God's not dead" from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_OTz-lpDjw
***John 10:1-5, 14-18