If God Wants Me to Follow Him, Why Can’t I See Him?

Matt gave his life to Jesus in high school, and everything changed. Sadly, a few years later, he drifted away, and eventually, he didn't believe in God at all.

We had many deep conversations, and I tried to answer his questions. One day, he said, "If God wants me to follow Him, why can't I see Him? If it matters so much, and He cares, wouldn't He make it obvious?"

I didn't know what to say. God does feel hidden at times. Was Matt right? God could write "I exist" in the sky. That would make things clearer. Yet He chooses not to.

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How do we make sense of this?

Let me offer three thoughts on this very complex subject.

1st Love requires a choice.

The Apostle Paul argues in Romans 1:20-21 that God is “clearly seen,” leaving us “without excuse.” Yet, God is not visible like the stars in the sky or the ground beneath our feet.

So what's Paul talking about?

It comes down to the type of relationship God desires to have with us. He is just and knows what every person needs in order to respond to Him in faith.

Undoubtedly, He is able to reveal Himself in a way that even the most strident atheist couldn't deny, but He doesn't want forced compliance; He's looking for willing surrender.

True love always requires a choice, and God is seen by anyone who seeks Him with an honest heart.

2nd We don't want to see.

We are profoundly less rational than we'd like to believe. We spend more time finding intellectual justifications for things we feel, whether true or false, than we realize or would like to admit.

Atheists and skeptics will point to this fact to dismiss belief in God, calling it merely wishful thinking.

They'll say, "How convenient that you believe in a God who solves your problems, never leaves you alone, and gives you life after death!"

Admittedly, belief in God relieves a lot of existential dread that haunts the nonbeliever, and this serves as a powerful motivator to believe, but that says nothing of its truthfulness.

What's less discussed are the powerful motivations for not wanting God to exist.
Belief in a God who is in charge and will one day hold us all accountable for our actions is as terrifying as it is comforting.

We are very skilled at not seeing what we don’t want to see.

As Aldous Huxley, famous author and philosopher candidly admits, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning, and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a particular system of morality. We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
I empathize with the sincere skeptics who want to see God and feel unable, and yet in most cases, they simply don't want to.

3rd It's all about Jesus.

For most people, the hiddenness of God is not an intellectual problem but a deeply emotional one. Where was God when my dad got sick and didn't recover? Or when I lost my job or my husband left me?

Life is hard, and crying out to God in the darkest moments is natural. But when His response does not meet our expectations, we often shake our fists at the sky and yell, "Where are you, God?"

We don't have perfect answers for why we suffer, but we have something better - Jesus Himself.

God did show Himself in the flesh in the most real way possible - through his son Jesus coming to live among us.

In the person of Jesus, as a historical fact and a current felt reality, we find hope, meaning, comfort, and forgiveness.

No other system of thought, worldview, or religion can claim that the Creator of the Universe entered into our suffering - not just to empathize with our plight but to end it once and for all.

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God is not hidden. He isn't far away or indifferent. Though we may not feel or see Him at times, we can have confidence that the God who did not spare His son for our sake will reveal Himself to anyone who seeks Him with an honest heart.

Want to listen to the conversation related to this blog? Listen to Episode 487: Why is God So Hidden? W/ Lee Strobel (Case for Christ)!