Excerpts

Glory Revealed: How the Invisible God Makes Himself Known

By David Nasser

Glory Revealed through…Experience

Everyone was crying but me. To the right of me was a lady with her hands held high and tears streaming down her face. To the left of me a man who was on his knees wiping his eyes and singing at the top of his lungs. I was standing between them, listening to the worship leader shout, “I want to touch you! I want to see your face! I want to know you more...” One by one, people were making their way down the aisle, flooding the altar. It felt as though God was revealing himself to everyone... everyone but me.

I was trapped. Whatever the congregation was sensing—I wasn’t. I was wide-awake in a sea of people clearly receiving something divine. My heart desperately wanted to be right there with them, so what did I do? I closed my eyes, lifted my hands, and sang even louder, hoping not to get left behind.

I wanted to see what everyone else was seeing.

Touch what everyone else was touching.

Feel what everyone else was feeling.

Know what everyone else was getting to know.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever felt as though when it comes to connecting with God, you’re missing out? Someone at Sunday school shares about “all that God has been saying to them lately.” You hear statements like,” We saw God in a powerful way...,” or “God spoke to me...,” or “My walk with God...” It sounds like God is busy making the rounds and visiting everyone at your church, but somehow, you’ve landed on the black list. If you’ve ever felt that way, welcome to the club…

This book is about learning to see and to hear God in our everyday lives. God is not silent; we just have to learn how to listen. He is not absent; we just have to know where to look. Sometimes we say, “I want to see you,” and God says, “I’ve been here all the while.” We say, “I want to hear you,” and he responds, “I never stopped talking.” May God use this book to help you dig into the Word so that you can see, hear, and experience God in life changing ways.

Glory Revealed through…Extravagant Love

A few years ago, I found myself alone, wandering the cobblestone streets of Rome. One night I found myself in a little trattoria just outside the Vatican. The large patio was well lit with candlelight, and the people were loud and boisterous. It was everything you would imagine an outdoor Italian restaurant to be.

As I sat there, I noticed a big Italian family starting to gather for some sort of reunion…At the center of the table, equally confident in calling the waiters to attention as weighing in on all the conversations, was the family patriarch. And seated next to him, a wide-eyed princess with curly hair—his little daughter, no more than eight or nine years old. She reminded me a bit of my daughter, Grace.

I sat at the table across from them, reading and watching, when the local flower peddler entered the scene. You know the guy—the one from the touristy street corner or romantic restaurant. The guy with the huge painter’s bucket filled with long-stemmed roses who, right in front of your date, tries to guilt you into buying one? Well, his cousin is alive and well in Rome. Just as I suspected, our family patriarch would have none of the peddler’s antics. With the crinkle of his brow and the flick of his wrist, he sent the street peddler on his way, barely skipping a beat of conversation. But then something happened that changed everything. The father caught a glimpse of his daughter’s eyes, engaged by the sight of the roses.

He stopped talking to the grandfather and kept looking at his daughter, whose eyes were fixed on the roses. He jumped from his chair and ran to catch up with the peddler. He whispered something in the peddler’s ear, exchanged nods, and with one sweeping movement, grabbed every rose from the bucket and thrust them into his daughter’s arms.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a little girl holding nearly one hundred long-stemmed roses—I certainly hadn’t before this moment—but it’s a sight that will suck the wind out of an entire room. Everyone in the restaurant fell silent as the loudest and most expressive guy there left us all speechless. Even those who didn’t see the amazing gesture of love were sucked in by the gaze of all of us who had just witnessed the amazing act. That father quieted us all with his love.

The little girl was absolutely stunned. The peddler offered his bucket, but she refused to let go of the giant pile of roses she could barely wrap her arms around. Instead, she sat there quietly through dinner, intermittently staring down at the roses and up at her dad. She didn’t need words to thank him, they would have just fallen short—she was speechless with awe.

That father lavished his little girl with his love. He wasn’t the least bit interested in those roses until he saw her face. The moment he realized what those roses would mean to her, he didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t afraid to make a mess when the roses were dripping water from the bucket. He didn’t haggle with the peddler over the price or wait until the next day to get a better deal at Costco. He refused to lose the moment.

That’s what the grace of God is—an enormous bundle of roses. More than you can wrap your arms around. Given in a moment so right that it floors you. A moment so right that you’re left speechless.

Glory Revealed through…Conversation

Have you ever looked at the caller ID on your phone and decided to let it go straight to voicemail because you didn’t want to have a conversation with the one calling? You might have thought, It’s only so and so. I can’t believe they’re calling me again. When are they going to get a clue?! Then just a minute later you received a call from a person that you’ve left numerous messages for and you answered excitedly without hesitation! We all do it—we categorize and determine who is worthy of conversation and who is not.

Aren’t you glad that the God of the universe has given us access to himself? When we call upon the name of the Lord, whether in prayer or worship, he answers every time. He doesn’t think, Oh, it’s the President. He’s important so I better get that, and then see my call and think, Oh it’s that persistent pest David Nasser again. He always wants to talk. God doesn’t categorize us and let us go to voicemail when he’s too busy. How awful would it be if the Lord thought, This person is way too needy. I wish I hadn’t given him access in the first place.

Glory Revealed through…Sin

Sin works the same way. We wake one morning and decide to neglect God’s principles, disobeying him in a “small” way. What’s the big deal about a little lie? The next thing you know, you’re telling a medium-sized lie to mask the little lie—something you’d have resisted the day before. In no time, you’re creating scenes of deception so great you didn’t even know you were capable of creating them. Even worse, your spiritual radar becomes so desensitized you may not even realize it.

I heard a story once about a wealthy man who’d just bought a pristine Bentley. He was elated about his new prize after being on the waiting list for a year. So he was extremely picky when it came to hiring his new chauffeur. He put three highly qualified applicants through a rigorous set of interviews and tests. Each candidate seemed equally capable, so the man came up with a tiebreaker.

He placed an orange safety cone in the middle of his helipad, instructing each driver to swerve as close as he could without hitting it. The first driver managed to get three inches from the cone without so much as tapping the breaks. Impressive! The second driver was even more masterful. He brought the car so close to the cone that the draft shook the cone from side to side—but he never actually hit the cone!

Everyone was a bit tentative as the third driver took the wheel. How could he possibly outdo the second driver without scratching the car? But the third driver didn’t seem phased. Confidently, the chauffeur put the car in drive, stepped on the accelerator and drove clear across the helipad avoiding the cone by thirty yards!

Stifling chuckles, the owner of the Bentley asked the third candidate, “What in the world did you do that for? You didn’t even come close to the cone!”

The chauffeur replied, “If the goal was not to hit the cone, I see no reason to flirt with it just to see how close I can get. If you hire me, I will stay far away from things that will harm your car so that I don’t hit them.”

He was hired on the spot. It’s better to have the driver who’s wise and guarded than the one who’s flirtatious and arrogant.

Glory Revealed through…Disappointment

Not all Christmas mornings are filled with laughter and cheer. For me and my wife, one Christmas was especially hard.

Try staring at a stocking hanging from the chimney, full of toys and gifts for a little boy who wouldn’t be home to open them. A little boy that Jennifer and I had worked tirelessly to adopt. A little boy stuck in another country by red tape that neither he nor we could understand. His name was Rudy.

When Jennifer and I started the process of adopting Rudy, a five-year-old boy orphaned in Guatemala, it was only supposed to take four to six months. Supposed to. Instead, we spent twenty-one months of sleepless nights and countless tears preparing for his arrival. The cost was much more than originally planned, both emotionally and financially. We had our faith and our hearts tested in ways we didn’t think possible—all in a fight to bring our son to his new home. It was hard, but it was worth it.

We had lots of great friends surrounding us, praying for us and for Rudy. But nothing seemed to be going our way. Home studies expired while fingerprinting and background checks inexplicably had to be redone. For a time the Guatemalan government put an indefinite hold on all adoptions and, to top it all off, some of our paperwork got lost and we had to start much of the process all over again. Here we were trying to do something we knew was so right, but something was going wrong at every turn. Every day we would wake up and hit a new obstacle….

At that moment in my life, God was not punishing me, He was enlarging my dependency upon him. He was stretching my faith so that he could strengthen it.

Glory Revealed through…Thankfulness

There is great spiritual maturity shown when someone praises God not only in the midst of their storms, but also at the end of great victory. Clinging to God in the difficult moments of life is hard, but celebrating him in moments of prosperity can be hard as well. When everything is going wrong, there is instant need for a God who is bigger than whatever we’re facing. We tend to look for a God whom we can cling to in the hard moments of life. When we win, though, it’s often very difficult to remember why we won in the first place. We lose sight of the fact that we won due to God’s provision, that we are blessed because of his doing, not because of our own.

Glory Revealed through…Insecurity

Ever since September 11, 2001, the public has demanded that our government insulate us from any and every threat that may possibly surface. How many people do you think realize how impossible that is? Try standing in an airport security line more than once a week, and you’ll see just how ridiculous it is to presume that the lady working the security counter can ultimately protect you from terrorism.

Don’t get me wrong, these are good people, doing the best that they can, but they are only human and they make mistakes. I once accidentally got a starter pistol through security, only to realize it when I began unpacking my bag later that night. I had driven to a city earlier that week, and had used the gun for a sermon illustration. I had forgotten to take it out of my bag in order to fly home, and somehow it was never caught.

It was a sobering reminder of how most of the time we walk around airports with a false sense of security. On one hand, I have seen the airport security stop someone’s grandmother from getting her nail clippers through, and on the other hand, security once let a man get on a plane with shoes full of explosives.

Glory Revealed through…Christ Alone

Sometimes what’s meant as a compliment ends up feeling like a kick in the ribs. A few summers ago, I was speaking at a festival in California where I had the opportunity to share my testimony with a crowd of more than forty thousand attendees. At first everything seemed to go great. I remember walking off the stage after my talk thinking, This was such a great night, when I decided to make my way to the prayer tent to see if the counselors needed extra help with those who’d come forward for prayer and counseling.

I never made it to the tent.

On my way there, I was intercepted by a youth pastor and his wife. They had sought me out to thank me, to encourage me for meeting their group right where they were spiritually. At first I was encouraged—until they kept talking.

As it turned out, they were the leaders of a youth group from the Church of Scientology. Their aim was to include all religions in their services. Until recently, it was hard to find material that was non-offensive to everyone in their group... until one of the teens discovered modern worship music. With so many songs referring to trees, hills, skies and a nondescript God as some celestial boyfriend, they were safe!

The couple had been hesitant to bring their group to festivals fearing speakers who would offend with a “close-minded” viewpoint regarding eternity. But as they put it, I didn’t offend at all. In fact, I only mentioned Jesus once or twice.

They went on and on about how refreshing it was that my message was not filled with a bunch of Jesus talk. As they thanked me, my heart sunk lower and lower. The problem was not what I had said in my message, but what I had not said.

See, I spent a lot of energy talking about the circumstances that led me to God, but I never made it clear that Jesus Christ is the only one who could save a wretched soul like me. I didn’t say that Jesus is the one who came to my rescue because he is the only one who has the power to save. I just presumed the audience got that, so I fast-forwarded through the “Christ as our only Savior” part of the gospel message. In turn, I never really presented the gospel at all.

A few hours later, I was in my hotel room on my knees praying repentantly. I made a covenant that night with God that I would never again be found guilty of not making clear the full message of the gospel. Forgetting to make known Christ’s exclusivity as Savior was not common practice in my preaching, but it had been that night and I committed that it would never happen again. I had learned a valuable lesson.

Glory Revealed through…Conversion

Jesus is a powerful God. He brought attention and glory everywhere he went. He made dead people alive; he didn’t make alive people dead. He healed the blind man’s eyes; he wasn’t looking to blind men. He took something as bland as water and turned it into something as potent as wine. And Christ did all this to prove that he could save people’s souls. It seems to me that these days the American church is content to turn water into sparkling cider.