By Billy Reinhardt

I was reading 2 Kings 3 at one point, and I found this note at the bottom of my “Gospel Transformation Study Bible” on page 456: “The Lord continues to treat His covenant people according to his steadfast love, in ways that we do not deserve.” This simple comment spurred me to reflect on the matters of bitterness, forgiveness, and the role of Christ’s cross in our forgiving of other people. As I read this statement, I immediately thought to myself, “Why is it that I am still holding onto bitterness and unforgiveness towards others?” and, much more importantly, “Why is it that Christ’s cross, along with His love and forgiveness shown towards me, seems so ineffective in completely neutralizing the bitterness I can harbor towards others?”

If we are being honest with ourselves, sometimes Jesus, and His love and mercy shown to us on the cross, seems so distant from our ordinary lives of hurt and pain. We often do not make this connection because Christ is not as real to us as we’d like Him to be or even as we profess Him to be. Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “…And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Where, exactly, is Jesus right now in my hurt and pain if He is “always” with us? Could one of the reasons that the Christian life is so difficult to live is due to this tangible disconnect between our lives and a God Whom we cannot see? I will submit to you that in order to better align our lives with Christ’s commands, we must “connect” with Christ in some way that makes Him as real, or more real, than the trials and difficulties we are going through. Isn’t it at this very point that the means by which we may connect with the intangible God is through the tangible means of the Spiritual Disciplines like prayer and Bible study along with other means such as corporate worship, the preaching of the Word, the Lord’s Supper, and a connection with Christian community? What if, in our effort to see the intangible God, we are looking right past Him by looking right past the means, and the people that He has sent our way, to connect us to Himself? What if the God we are looking for, or the God that we can’t see, is as close as the Bible, the person, or the church that is right in front of me?

What if the root of our withering faith in a God Whom we cannot see is rooted in a lack of faith and practice of the Spiritual Disciplines (Bible study, worship, Christian community, etc.) that we can see? Christ is no longer physically present on this earth, and that is so that His Holy Spirit may dwell within each believer (John 16:7) and that we may experience the intangible God via the intangible Holy Spirit that moves and operates within a tangible person with whom we can interact. God, in His goodness, has left us, frail and doubting as we are, with a physical Book (the Bible) with words that we can read and understand in actual black-and-white print. We may complain about not hearing the voice of God, yet He is good enough to give us 66 books where His voice can be heard. Additionally, within the church, He has given us the voice of teachers, as well as many other voices within the entire Body of Christ, through which He may speak to us. Is God’s voice really so silent after He has given all of these tangible means through which He may speak, or is it the fact that we’d rather not hear what God would say to us through these means? Do we find these ordinary means by which God may speak to us as too unspectacular and “too ordinary,” thus we miss what He is saying to us right now?

We cannot complain about an intangible God when we are not using the tangible means that He has given to us by which we may meaningfully connect to Him. We cannot complain about a God that we cannot see when we are not using the means that we can see and use (Bible, Worship, Prayer, Christian Community, etc.) to meaningfully connect to Him. The God whose voice we cannot audibly hear can be heard through the Bible and through His people. The God Whose presence we cannot see is seen through the presence of His people whom we can see. We may go to a church service and cry out within our hearts, “Where is God!?” yet, in a room full of His people, He is right there in the midst. We may hear a sermon and think, “How boring and how irrelevant this is to my life!” yet it could be the very voice of God speaking to you right at your point of need. We need not look for God’s voice in burning bushes or in the sky; God’s voice often comes in much more subtle, unassuming ways that we might not expect.

All of this makes a full circle back to my lack of forgiveness. If there is a lack of forgiveness within my heart, then that is not because Christ is not real and that is not because Christ’s love and mercy shown towards me is not real, but it is because I have not been using the very real means of grace to tangibly connect His presence at the point of my hurt and my pain. Let us not blame God for an “unfinished building” when He has given us the hammer to complete it.

*Billy Reinhardt is the pastor of Riverside Heights Baptist Church in Tallassee. He lives in Tallassee with his wife, Jessica, and their four children. He blogs at www.billyreinhardt.com where he writes articles on matters of faith, family, and culture.