God Has Your Back, but Have You Seen His?
Imagine you are trying to show someone who is physically blind what God looks like. Would you fail because they cannot see? If their eyes were healed, would they all of the sudden see God, or only what was in front of them? What about those who can see with their physical eyes, yet are double blind when they cannot see with their spiritual eyes?
We would need to come through the backdoor.
Otherwise, what you see physically will be misinterpreted from within, while one is left projecting a distorted picture of what they thought they were seeing.
An example of this is when Moses was drawing the Israelites out of Egypt, and therefore, drawing the Egypt out of them. The people had misinterpreted the outward signs and sounds of God, and were afraid. Moses met with God on what to do about this and God spoke with him “face-to-face”, but a short time later told Moses he could not show him His face or he would die.
Did God turn his back on Moses?
Yes and No.
No in the sense that believed God was shunning Moses.
Yes in the sense that God was showing God’s goodness, God’s back, which was the present level of beauty Moses would have been able to handle going forward.
“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” -Exodus 33:19,23
The question is: What do we do with Absolute Goodness? How do we perceive it from within?
After seeing God’s back, God’s goodness, Moses came back to the people with his own face shining, yet the people were afraid of that face, so he put a veil over it to protect them from their fears.
Sound familiar?
After Adam and Eve ate of the “I am not” tree in the Garden of Eden that they were told not to eat from, they hid when they heard the sound of I Am walking to find them. Their knowledge of thinking they would now be like God through knowing good and evil became distorted by who they thought God was not, rather than by who God really is. Their being became distorted in who they really were. They became afraid of Absolute Goodness and Unconditional Love, misunderstanding the heart of God.
So God put skin (a veil) on them, like Moses veiling his face, to cover “their” shame (Not God’s) that they were not ready to let go of.
Foundational messages to consider so far:
God always looks for you and has your back.
God wants to show you His back, His goodness.
We are covered in flesh, or a veil, until we learn to see from the inside out, from the heart.
Jesus Comes Through The Backdoor
Along comes Jesus through the backdoor of our blindness by becoming a human with flesh, covered with that veil that would eventually be torn to reveal what we’ve always wanted to know, or rather, what we know but have forgotten.
In Jesus, God is under the veil of our same skin, coming to us in our hiddenness and shame to reveal the Image of the Invisible, the Image of who we really are.
He comes to His own creation, standing in front of them, and most do not recognize him. They are still afraid, still blind to this God they fear to look upon, thinking they will be killed.
Yet how long has God been looking for and upon you?
Jesus lives in the flesh to a point where the human slavery to fear projects all their inner distortion and wrath upon him, thinking he should be killed. Jesus should get what we think God wants us to get, a proper punishment in order to deal with our shame, fear, or anger. To deal with our knowledge of good and evil. Humanity said, “May it rather be him than us! Anyone but us!”
Like the first Adam we blame and project: “It was not my fault, it was the woman you gave me!”
It is always God or “them” who are wrong, when our own backs are turned from the face of Reality.
Now we come to the picture of God in the flesh, the Last Adam, being flogged to the point his flesh was removed from his back. He was coming to humanity again asking, “Where are you?” to answer our same question of God, “Where are you?” And when you look through that bloodied mess that was once his back, the veil is torn as you begin to see…a beating heart.
Linger with that picture. If someone who is physically blind is near you, tell them the story. With patience and kindness, you both will begin to see.
The back of God has now opened for us to see the heart of God.
The back was showing us what was in front of us, deeper still, what was in the deepest part of us, all along. God’s face cannot, and will never, turn away from us, but until we see the heart of God, we are prone to turn away from the face of Absolute Goodness or misinterpret the face we think we see. We are prone to think God turns His back on us as if to shun. Without the heart of God, we look at the face of God in Jesus, and think we will die (let it be him not us!), or rather, we reveal we are already spiritually dead/blind, and therefore we project that blindness with its distorted images of ourselves onto that face.
We crucify and turn our back on the Son.
What does the Son and Our Father do in this situation?
Do They then turn their back on us?
Yes and No.
Like earlier, Absolute Goodness has answered this sense of both.
No one can see the face of God and live….until they see the heart of God.
When we see the heart of God we see the extent God goes to find us and reveal to us what God is actually like. The extent undertaken to help us remember the echoes of Eden in our heart, as God still walks throughout history lovingly asking, “Where are you?” When we finally have the courage to ask the same question, we are shown the back in order to turn us back, to the front.
What we see is the beginning of Perfect Love casting out all fear, from our heart, which begins to heal the distorted images we had on the face of God, ourselves, and others.
As our eyes open to how we missed the mark, we see the marks on the hands and feet of Jesus. We peer through the torn veil of his back into the heart of Eternity. What a marvelous sight to behold! What goodness!
Through that back we see the heart, and are on our way to seeing the face of the Invisible, finally living face to face rather than dying in our turning away. We no longer ask, “Why have you forsaken Me?”, because the question has been answered, “I never will.” Then we are no longer afraid of the sound of God walking in the Garden of our own heart as the other question, “Where are you?”, is answered.
God’s got your back.
Look at His.
-PH
Easter 2025
“I gave My back to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting.” - Isa 50:6
“All we like sheep had gone astray; we turned our face, everyone, to his own way, and the Lord laid on His back, the iniquities of us all….so that we can become the light again, and remember who we really are as we return to the face of God.” - Isa 53
“The God who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made the light of His face shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God seen in the face of Jesus Christ.” - 2 Cor 4:6
