Romans 1:5 (ESV): through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
Abba,
Where are you?
I don’t see you.
Life is a blur.
Comings and goings
Doings and not doings
Busyness everywhere.
Where are you?
I don’t see you.
There is a frantic
Fearful intensity
To the hurryings
That I witness every day
But where are you?
I don’t see you.
Our speeches are filled
With wise sounds
Pithy phrases
Conventional wisdom
But where are you?
I don’t see you.
Man’s wisdom is lauded
Man’s ways are hoisted up
Man’s ideals are exercised
Man’s conventions excel
Where are you?
I don’t see you.
Men, women, and children
Seek and give counsel
In the hopes of finding resolution
To all the problems that beset them.
But where are you?
I don’t see you.
“Christian” counselors abound
Yet foolishness echos forth
Empty and vain words
The blind leading the blind.
Where are you, Abba?
Where are you?
Drugs, alcohol, sex
Food, entertainment, amusement
Flood our lives in abundance
Attempting to silence the screaming
I don’t see you
Neither do they.
Abba, what is glaring and obvious
Is that you are not present
In their thoughts or ideas
In their passions or delights
You are absent for them.
They don’t see you.
I don’t see you in them.
Terrifyingly, many of them
Profess your name
Declare faith in you
Proclaim repentance
But by their actions they proclaim,
“Where are you God?”
I don’t see you.
Abba, the gospel calls us to faith
Faith call us to you
You transform our lives
Our very hopes and desires
The motivations and intents of our hearts
The patterns of our thinking
The convictions we hold dear
The actions of our lives.
“The obedience of Faith”
Romans 1:5 calls it.
Being exposed to you, changes us.
Glimpsing your glory ruins us for this world
Why then, when I look around
Do I see so little of you
From the very ones who profess
To know and love you?
Why does my heart cry…
Where are you, Abba?
I don’t see you.
Why is the professed faith
Of your chosen children
Not exposed and proclaimed
In the “obedience of faith?”
Oh how my heart yearns
For your children to see and know
The very God they profess
And who gave all for them.
Oh, how that is the earnest
Desire of my own heart
For my own self
For my own heart.
Why do we see so little of you
Why do we see so much of us
Why is our faith
Not evidenced in our obedience?
Oh may that your gospel
Shine upon the darkness of our hearts
Illuminating the glory of your face
And bring about in us the obedience of faith.
May it be, Abba.
May it be.
May we declare,
You are here!
We see you!
A Singular Passion 