Jesus in a Frame

“… I will manifest myself to him.” John 14:21

A little boy, whose father was away from home most of the time, looked at his dad’s picture on the wall and said to his mother: “Mother, I wish father would come out of that frame.”

Is God real to you, a person near at hand? Or is he more like a picture on the wall, a motto, a doctrine, something wonderful to look at and think about, but still in a frame? Have you wished he might come out of the frame, become a glorious living reality? Have you cried, “Oh that I knew where I might find him?”

Is Jesus in a frame—lovely, wondrous to think about—but he stays up on the wall? Sorrow has come, and failure, and pain, and loneliness, and you have wept and prayed, but still he isn’t real, he seems to stay in a frame. And doubt sneers, “Is there anything to it?”

He said he would come out of the frame. “He that hath my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love Him, and will manifest myself to Him” (John 14:21). You have his commandments, faith in him and love for one another (1 John 3:23), but are you keeping them? You trust and pray, but have you obeyed? When you do he will come out of the frame.