Does God See Me?

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In your darkest moments, is it difficult to imagine that God really sees you? In your hardest seasons, do you feel overlooked? In your deepest need, do you feel forgotten? Invisible?

Personally, I have experienced moments of deep confusion over the sense that God just doesn’t notice what I’m dealing with or struggling through. I see others flourishing in areas I wish I was and think:

“I’m the one trying to be faithful! I’m the one trying to follow God and do the right thing! Why do they seem to have it all? Does God even see me?!”

First of all, we have to acknowledge that there are times when we don’t want God to see. When we would prefer that God does NOT see. We hope to cruise by under the radar, undetected. And we wouldn’t have to flip through too many pages of the Bible to find the very first case of this. 

In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve believed a lie over believing God, sin entered the world and made its home in each person’s heart ever since - like a poison.

As a result, we now question whether God even wants us to be happy, whether God loves us at all. And these doubts result in the belief that God is repulsed by us when we sin. It is true that God hates sin. But as we see in the story of Genesis, God is drawn to us, even when we sin. Because he wants to restore us to himself. 

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve didn’t believe this. So they hide from God instead of run to him when he looks for them in the garden. 

Does God see me when I’ve sinned and made a mess of my life? Yes child, he does. He sees you and he seeks you out.  

What about when I’ve been sinned against? Clearly God doesn’t see me if he’s allowed me to be hurt! For this question, we turn to the story of Hagar just a few chapters later in Genesis 16.

Hagar was the maidservant of Abram and Sarai before God changed their names to Abraham and Sarah: the parents of God‘s chosen people. For the sake of simplicity, I will use their more familiar names even though God had changed their names after this event took place.

Because Abraham and Sarah were already in the twilight years of life and it had been decades since God promised them a child, Sarah decided to take matters into her own hands in order to ensure a child be born to Abraham. So, through means that God did not ordain, Sarah told her husband to sleep with her maidservant, Hagar, and have their promised child through her.

What could go wrong?

Well as a side note, if you’ve ever wondered about the origins of the conflict in Middle East, look no further.

Ishmael and Isaac: both sons of Abraham.

Both claiming to be the promised child living in the promised land.

Alas, I digress. We’ll table “world peace” as a topic for another post.

Sarah’s plan is a success: Hagar is pregnant with Abraham’s child. Unfortunately, Sarah’s reaction makes her look certifiably insane because she starts to abuse Hagar even though this all part of her master plan. Her abuse is so severe that Hagar takes her chances and runs away into the desert.

Picture it: a slave girl, impregnated by her master, alone in the desert. Not a good survival look. Does God even see her?

But God shows up. He sees Hagar suffering in the desert. He cares for her, encourages her, and blesses the son in her womb.

Not only that but in Genesis 16, Hagar is the first person in the Bible to give God a name. She calls him El-Roi, which means The Living One who sees me, and says, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

So whether you have sinned or been sinned against. God sees you. 

The Bible is clear on this over and over and over.

There is a beautiful description detailing God's intimate knowledge and creation of every person found in Psalm 139. In the psalm we read that we are not only created by God, but known by him deeply. It says this:

1 You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

…

13 For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

On the one hand, it really is beautiful and comforting. But let’s remember that some of us don’t want to be seen at all. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we don’t want to be found out. So verses like Hebrews 4:13 can be terrifying when we read that no creature is hidden from God’s sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Yikes!

Of course we want to be seen when we’ve been hurt or victimized and would love for someone to advocate for us and exact vengeance on those who stole our innocence.

But what if we are the perpetrator? What if we are the ones responsible for the mess of our lives?

It would serve us well to gain a better understanding of what God is looking for when he seeks us out.  

2 Chronicles 16:9 says that,

“The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

Where is your heart? Are you committed to Jesus? Are looking for him as he looks for you? Do you know that he seeks you out to strengthen you? That knowledge sure does motivate me to come out from hiding!

Another barrier to rightly seeing God as he sees us, stems from our tendency to get caught up looking at the wrong things for the peace and strength that God designed for us to get from him. We don’t even notice God looking out for us because we are too busy gazing at the world. Too engrossed in whatever everyone else has to offer. 

When God sent Samuel to anoint the king of Israel. Samuel was presented with the seven sons of Jesse. Each "understood the assignment” for what it meant to be a king by worldly standards. 

If we didn’t know how the story ends, I doubt we’d expect their runt of a brother, David, to end up as king. 

But we all do this! We compare ourselves to whoever our eyes land on, talking ourselves out of our own calling, and disqualifying ourselves because we don’t measure up.

What a comfort to know that while the prophet Samuel is looking them over and seeing how those sons of Jesse measure up, God whispers to Samuel, “man looks at the outward appearance, the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). David wasn’t chosen because he looked a certain way. He was chosen for his heart.

No matter what angle you take or perspective you have. God always looks at the heart. That’s what he sees. So where is your heart? Is it slow to trust? Are you prone to build your identity and sense of worth on whether others see you or value you?

In Isaiah 43:1-4, the prophet tells the people:

1 But now, this is what the Lord says—

    he who created you, Jacob,

    he who formed you, Israel:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

2 When you pass through the waters,

    I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

    they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

    you will not be burned;

    the flames will not set you ablaze.

3 For I am the Lord your God,

    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

I give Egypt for your ransom,

    Cush and Seba in your stead.

4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight,

    and because I love you,

I will give people in exchange for you,

    nations in exchange for your life.

I don’t think I spend enough time dwelling on the fact that God tells me I am precious and honored in his sight and that he loves me. I know I would put less weight on how others view me if I spent even a fraction of my time reflecting on how loved I am by God. How about you?

Unfortunately, in our flesh, we really do want people to see us, and know us, and understand us, and dare I say—maybe even like us a little bit!

Jesus warns against this in his Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6, his words paint a picture about doing the right things for the wrong reasons by describing people who pray.

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (Matthew 6:5-6).

Does God see me? Sure, pal. He sees you. But so does everyone else. And if that’s why you’re doing good deeds and engaging in spiritual practices, well you’ve gotten all you’re going to get out of them. God wants to grow something in us privately, in the secret place that is too precious and holy to be done publicly. 

Jesus explains this a little more in Matthew 13 when his disciples ask him why he speaks in riddles and stories. He had just finished sharing the Parable of Sower where he talks about the different types of soil that receive seed and how seed thrown on soil that isn’t fertile doesn’t grow.

Jesus tells them why he speak to them in parables, ‘this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’”

The idea here is that although God sees us, we don’t necessarily look for him. Or when we do, we don’t like what we find because he’s not doing what we want or behaving the way we think he should. So we conclude that God simply doesn’t care, and he doesn’t see, and then we miss him entirely.

Eyes on the Prize

What if this doesn’t quite describe you? What if you’re more like the apostle Peter? I’d like to think I am as well. Peter had the best intentions and really wanted to follow Jesus well. But he often got ahead of himself, was impulsive, or got distracted.

In Matthew 14, when Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him on a boat across the sea, they got caught in a storm that had them in survival mode all through the night. It wasn’t until about six in the morning when they see someone walking towards them on the water, which filled them with terror.

Spoiler alert: it was Jesus. He calls out to them saying, “Take courage! It is I, don’t be afraid.”

In the original language, the, “it is I” phrasing is actually a nod to the "I AM” statement that God declares from the burning bush to Moses, thousands of years before.

The disciples are still frantic, but it’s Peter that is compelled to boldly step out into the raging storm towards Jesus. In Matthew 14:30 the writer tells us, “but when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Did you catch that? But when he saw the wind. It’s amazing what we can do when we are filled with faith and walking with Jesus. It’s also unfortunate how quickly we can stumble and sink under our troubles when our eyes dart to the left and to the right, looking at the wrong things. When we focus on the storm rather than the One who can calm us through it.

Does this describe you, too? Best intentioned, looking at Jesus, but then easily distracted, looking everywhere else, and beginning to sink.

Let me encourage you with one more anecdote from the Scriptures.

In the opening lines of the book of Jeremiah, God tells the prophet in Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”

I had this beautiful verse on the wall of my son’s bedroom when he was a baby and we lived in Montreal. The truth is that although God destined Jeremiah for great things, he called him to difficult things as well.

Of all the prophets in the Bible, Jeremiah is the one known as the “weeping prophet” because of his deep grief and sorrow over the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the suffering of his people. I believe this claim to fame is also based on sorrow over his warnings being ignored, even laughed at by the people.

When you know the context, you might think twice about slapping this verse on the wall of your precious child’s nursery.

But I’m comforted in knowing that God sees all of it. The exile was coming. Their time in the Promised Land was nearing its end, and yet God sees them and encourages them to seek him too.

In Jeremiah 29:10-14, the Lord says this through the prophet: 

10 “When seventy years are completed for Babylon,

I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord,

“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord,

“and will bring you back from captivity.

I will gather you from all the nations and places

where I have banished you,” declares the Lord,

“and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Does God see me? Yes. Even when I’ve sinned? Yes. Even when I’ve been been against? Yes. 

In light of this, am I determined to keep my eyes on him and and seek him as he seeks me? I hope you’ll join me in a resounding and emphatic, YES!

What’s in the Ears

This is the part where I share a song or podcast I’m currently into. This song is a medley of two songs titled, Secret Place and Goodness of God. Goodness of God is one of my favorite worship songs of all time. Like, “play at my funeral” kind of favorite. But Secret Place is really moving and suits this topic perfectly. Let me know if you check it out!

If this stirred something in you, share this post with a friend or drop a comment below. I’d love to hear what small step you’re taking towards the flourishing life today! And don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

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