Articles
What Is God Seeing?
Today, and for a few weeks, I'm participating in a program with my car insurance company, that will reward me with a discount assuming my driving meets their standards. I just plug in this little device on my automobile, and it monitors what I do. They said they would be looking for sudden hard braking, excessive acceleration, and driving late at night. (Maybe I better let my wife do all the driving). But, this little electronic device won't lie, it won't cover up any bad driving, it's going to tell it like it is.
When we stand before God on judgment day, it's going to be the same. God will know our lives, exactly like we lived them. He will know every evil deed, every hateful thought, and we will hide nothing from Him. Likewise, He will know the righteous things we did while on earth.
Some people have the impression of God that He is some distant being, who occasionally opens the blinds and looks down on creation, or that He is only close to us when we are close to Him. How wrong they are!
God is ever present. He lives in us as Christians by the Spirit (Acts 2:38, 1:8) Where we go, He goes. What we say, He hears. What we think, He knows. He is a guide and a comforter for those of us who have Him, not a watchdog. But what about those who reject Him? God knows what non-believers do, where they go, what they say and what they think too. He is watching us all, even those who do not have His Spirit. The only difference is He has not sent the Spirit to dwell in them for their benefit like He has those who have obeyed His commands.
But, we should never look at the Spirit as a monitoring device regarding what we do. No, in fact, God's Spirit lives in us for totally different purposes. We become the temple where He lives, and He is with us to help guide us to live the Christian life. This means we have a measure of His power. It means we have a helper who not only knows the deep things of God, but is Himself, God. This means we are never alone, as there is no place we can go that the Spirit doesn't go with us. No one can remove God's Spirit from us. (Psalm 139:7, 1 Cor 2:10, 1 Cor 3:16)
Today, God is watching. He watches us for our protection as well as observance of our actions. Nothing is hidden or concealed. We will not arrive at judgment day and hand God a thumb drive so that He can see if we earned any extra brownie points with good behavior, it doesn't work that way. But knowing God is watching, let us conduct ourselves properly because we love Him, and want to serve Him, and want to please Him. His Spirit dwells in us to help us do this.
In this way, we will glorify Him.
