06/09/2026
Seeing Clearly
George Parsley
Most people believe in God and readily accept the Bible as the Word of God. But do we clearly see the magnitude of both of those acknowledgments? Paul wrote, “ For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: 21 because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened” (Rm. 1:20-21).
Creation gives evidence of a Designer and Creator, that, most people readily accept and rightfully so, affirm this fact. We can “see” the evidence is everywhere, but do we clearly see the implication of what we see?
Let me explain it this way, for close to 15 years I lived in Arizona, Florida and Texas. In those states there are rattlesnakes, in all that time I only saw two of them and then it was from a car. There were times when I was in their habitat and kept a keen eye and open ears, I knew they could be there, I knew they were in the area, but I never saw them. But suppose I had at one point “clearly saw” and heard one? At which point things would change, before then I acknowledged the fact of them, but when I clearly saw one, a sense of fear, anxiety and respect is front and center.
We can understand this illustration, but it illustrates our text from Romans above. We can go through life acknowledging facts about God, but never clearly see Him. But when we do clearly see Him and His Word truly, we will have a completely different outlook on both Him and His Word, just like we would coming face to face with that rattlesnake.
We will then produce, fear, anxiety and acute attention to detail in order to not get “bit” as in meeting up with that rattlesnake. We read, “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom; And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Prov. 9:10). This word fear here is defined as, “fear, terror, fearing, awesome or terrifying thing (object causing fear)” (Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew Lexicon).
You see, when we clearly see God and His Word clearly there will no longer be differing “churches”, doctrines, ways of worship, attitudes that do what they will because God didn’t say not to and so many things we see today.
You see, we can see the evidence, affirm the evidence of God and His Word, and yet not clearly see God! We simply, see what we want to see. Paul goes onto say, “ Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves: 25 for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. 1:22-25). In short, we change God into what we want to see Him as instead of who He truly is. We see the evidence everywhere and affirm that evidence, and yet in the end, see what we want to see. Are you clearly seeing God or just affirming Him?
