Ascend
1 John 3:1-2
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. 2 Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.
My favourite line in this verse is also a lyric from a Bethel Music song called “Ascend” (click here to listen to it). It says:
“When we see him we’ll be like him.
Face to face we’ll know what love is”
I love this because it lifts my eyes to a higher view and a promise of things to come. It moves me from getting stuck down in “street view” like in Google maps and zooms me out to 10,000 feet where I can see more clearly what the point of all this mess and stress of life is really about.
We are made in the image of God. We are God’s very own children. So, despite our sin, brokenness, inadequacies and all the pain in the world around us- we still carry that image and that identity. Yet it’s like we see dimly through a dirty old mirror. We can’t quite make out our truest selves yet and who we were meant to be as sons and daughters of God the Father.
Jesus has made a way for us make to God as our Father. He has promised to come again and all those who put their trust in him will be saved; and not only saved but transformed into the likeness of Christ. We will be LIKE Jesus and be made whole again.
We get glimpses of it now on earth, but largely day to day life muddles our vision or keeps us preoccupied at “street view”. We forget our true identity and the promises that identity holds for us. We don’t ascend to our true selves.
There is great pain in our lives. Your life and my life will experience failure, loss, betrayal, sickness and death. Yet we have this hope that will not disappoint- that one day all will be as it should be. Whether in this life or in the next- God’s best is yet to come, and by his grace he is making us new day by day.
Stop and ask him to help you see your situation and your struggles as he sees them, and pray bold prayers today, knowing you are made in his image and are called his very own child.