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The Visible Father
Our God became a man, not just to save our lives but to offer us new ones.
By Anne Graham Lotz
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When I was a young girl, almost every Sunday afternoon that my father was home, we would hike to the ridge of the mountain on which we lived. On one of our hikes, Daddy inadvertently stepped on an anthill. When he looked down at his big footprint in the soft dirt, he could see the havoc he had wreaked on the bustling ant colony. Panic had set in as ants scurried in every direction, confused as to what had become of their world. Daddy stooped down to try and reopen the tunnels, scooping away the collapsed soil, but to no avail. His fingers were too big and the ants were so small. In frustration, he mused, if only he could become an ant, even temporarily, he could tell them what was wrong and how to fix it. But he couldn't. There was an impassable barrier between him and the little creatures because he was a big man and they were tiny insects.
That impassable barrier between my father and those little ants illustrates the barrier between God and mankind. As God looked down from heaven, man scurried around in panic, unable to cope with the confusion and conflict of life. All man's answers to the problems of pain and evil and death were insufficient. Life just didn't make sense. There seemed to be no order or long-term purpose to it all.
And so our God became a Man, not just to sort out the confusion, but to offer a new life altogether. Jesus came to make God visible.
The awesome reality of who Jesus is presents you and me with a compelling and inescapable choice—to receive Jesus Christ by faith as God's revelation of Himself or to reject Him.
When the Virgin Mary was engaged to be married, the angel Gabriel informed her that she would be with child and give birth to a son. She submitted to God's Word through Gabriel, responding, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said" (Luke 1:26-38). And she conceived within her body the physical life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you and I submit to the Word of God by faith, receiving the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts, we spiritually conceive His life within our own bodies. But we don't give birth to a child; we become children of God.
A little boy whose daddy had been away on a long business trip gazed longingly at the smiling face of his father staring out at him from a framed photograph. Tears began slipping down his cheeks as he said simply, "I wish Daddy would just step out of the picture."
Praise God! Our Father has stepped out of the picture, and His name is Jesus.
Adapted from Just Give Me Jesus (W Publishing), © 2000 Anne Graham Lotz. Used by permission. Visit Anne at www.angelministries.org.
Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine.Click here for reprint information. 1 of 1
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