Dads Not Home

2“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4“And where I go you know, and the way you know.” 5Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” 8Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
John 14: 2 - 9 NKJV

Some of us can emphasize with poor Philip in some way.  He had dwelled among his heavenly Father in the flesh for more than a few years, and yet now here he was asking Jesus to reveal the Father to him.  I don't find this too surprising, for I myself have often found myself wondering, "where are you God?"  I've prayed that all He need do is to reveal Himself in some way to me and it would be sufficient for me to believe that He is with me.  Of course, I now realize that the very thing I was looking for had been there all along.  Part of my conversation with Dennis this week was something he described as seperatism.  This is the old testament belief that God is somehow seperated and far off from his children whom He loves.  In fact, it is a belief which I adhered to for so long in christianity.  Believing that Christ had come to erase my sins, I also believed that Jesus had remained in heaven after ascending to the right hand of the Father upon His resurection.  That was the seperatism, that Jesus looked down upon me as I made my way along through life.  Of course, I believed that if I were to stumble that Christ would be there to help me, but somehow it would take awhile to travel from heaven to my situation here on earth right?  This is the absurdity of thinking that God is somehow removed from all  that we do.  This is the error in believing that our heavenly Father is simply waiting in heaven waiting for us to stumble.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  While I prayed for God to reveal Himself to me, He was there with me all along.

20“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galations 2: 20 NKJV

There is probably no other scripture which throws a wrench into the traditional christian teaching of our seperation from God than Pauls revelation in Galations 2.  For our heavenly Father is not afar off from our lives, but it is He Himself that today shares our lives with us personaly.  At times we may find ourselves asking, as Philip had, that God might reveal Himself to us.  His answer to us today is the same as it was to Philip back then, "Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known me?"  As Paul tells us, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me!"  That sounds nothing like speration to me.  To me, it tells us that God Himself is with us each and every day.  Not only that, but we are assured that whatever we think, feel and experience we experience as Christ who is in us.  I was reminded of this once again this week as I endured a few of lifes trials.  Yes, I now know that Christ is in me, but old habits are seemingly the hardest to get rid of.  As I prayed that God would reveal Himself to me I got the same answer Philip had, "Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known Me?"

~Scott~