Man. This is difficult! How do you simplify Jesus? Here's the best way I know how today.
Jesus is the tangible expression of God and Heaven -- how they think, feel, were made, and live in love every single day.
I get what it's like, having faith in the unknown. Believing in the heavenly realm and host unseen. But we have no idea what that love and faith mean to Jesus.
I'll try and paint a quick picture for you. Chances are, I don't know you (the reader right now) personally. But imagine you overheard me talking about you to a complete stranger. Having never met you, you heard me talking about you behind your back, and I had the most flattering, loving, kind things to say about you. I saw your heart, defended your character, and loved who you were. How would you feel hearing all this?
I'm sure you'd be ecstatic in a thoroughly new way because you know the opportunity I had not to be that way. You know people talk about you both good and bad, people have opinions, and you're often misunderstood, but I acted so differently and loved you. Despite the odds, I noticed your heart and saw the love behind everything you tried to do that few people took the time to see.
This is what your faith means to Jesus, and this is how we get to treat Him on Earth.
You have no idea how much your faith means to Jesus and how loved it makes Him feel.
In Heaven, angels began to get jealous and covet who God was. Having seen Him face to face, having unprecedented access to His heart and His ways, angels looked Him, Almighty God, in the face and said He was NOT good. Wow. Then a third of the angels chose to leave Heaven to worship themselves. That was not a fun day in Heaven!
Imagine experiencing that, then looking down to Earth at a world full of people with free will, their own choices and emotions, but never having seen you, have faith in you! AND THEY'RE YOUR CHILDREN! They have faith not only that you exist but that you are good, kind, rigidly righteous, and consistent. They believe you are in love despite what they can and cannot see. That's a love of God's heart, not what He can do.
You may have a longing to see Jesus face to face, and that's incredible. But our time on Earth is such a short window that we can worship and love Him in a way that we'll never be able to in Heaven. Our time on Earth, not having seen anything about Him with our tangible eyes, choose to believe He's good and follow Him. It's miraculous. And instead of always thinking about what God can do for us, we'll start living like we can do something for Him! Realizing how much of our genuine love moves and covers His heart.
Imagine we stopped disqualifying the purity in people around us due to our wrong character analysis. What if we had faith in people despite the odds? Imagine how we could make people feel and how quickly the world would change.
And imagine we stopped limiting the Holy One by completely submitting to Him. Choosing to believe He's better than we've ever seen, bigger than we imagine, closer than we've seen, and as real and close we've always hoped He would be. I can guarantee that Heaven would come back down to Earth and come back sooner than we think.
