There are moments when God teaches me something through Scripture, prayer, or worship. And then there are mornings when He teaches me something on the drive to school.
This morning was one of those mornings.
My son, Gabe, and I were riding to school when he looked at me and asked, “Mom, am I doing a good job in school?” The question caught me off guard because we had just talked about this the day before. And when I say he was doing a good job, I mean he had brought home all 100 on his assignments. Not 90s; 100. Homework, papers, quizzes—100 after 100 after 100.
His dad and I had already told him how proud we were of him. We had talked about how his hard work, obedience, and good choices showed us that he was growing and learning to handle responsibility.
So when he asked me again the next morning, I knew my child well enough to know there was something underneath the question. He started telling me how much he appreciated his dad and me and the things we do for him.
And I listened for a minute.
Then I finally asked, “Gabe, why are you telling me this again?”
That’s when it became clear. There was something he wanted. He wanted some money for his VR game, and in his ten-year-old mind, he needed to make sure I remembered just how well he’d been doing. I laughed and asked him, “Are you trying to butter us up?”
He admitted that sometimes, yes, that was his strategy. And that’s when a funny conversation between a mother and her son became something much deeper for me.
I looked at him and said: “Gabe, you don’t have to do that. I see you.
Almost as soon as the words came out of my mouth, they hit me differently.
I see you.
And suddenly, I wasn’t only talking to my son anymore. I was being reminded of something about the heart of God.
God sees what you’re going through.
But He doesn’t only see where you are right now. He sees what you need, what you desire, what He’s developing in you and what you cannot see yet.
God Sees More Than Your Existence
When we say that God sees us, I think it’s easy to hear those words in the simplest possible way:
God knows I’m here.
But being seen by God means so much more than God acknowledging our existence.
When I told Gabe, “I see you,” I wasn’t telling him that I knew he was sitting beside me in the car. I meant that I had been paying attention.
I saw the grades.
I saw the effort.
I knew what he wanted.
I remembered what he had asked for.
And I knew there were things he wanted that he hadn’t mentioned that morning. That’s what made me think about how much deeper God’s sight is.
God sees what you’re going through.
He sees the prayer you’ve prayed more than once. He sees the need you haven’t figured out how to meet. He sees the desire you keep bringing before Him. He sees the disappointment you haven’t completely gotten over. He sees the work you’re putting in that nobody else seems to notice.
He sees the parts you tell people about, and He sees the parts you don’t.
But there is another part of being seen by God that we don’t talk about nearly as much:
God sees what comes next. That was the part Gabe couldn’t see.
At ten years old, he was thinking about what he wanted right now. As his mother, I had to think beyond the purchase itself and consider what our decisions were developing in him.
What are we teaching him about patience?
What are we teaching him about gratitude?
What kind of appetite are we creating if every desire is immediately satisfied?
What are we teaching him about stewardship, discipline, and contentment?
His father and I aren’t simply making decisions for the ten-year-old sitting in front of us. We’re helping shape the man he’s becoming. And even then, our view is limited. We can pray. We can seek God’s wisdom. We can follow Scripture. We can use what we’ve learned through experience.
But we still don’t know Gabe’s future. God does.
That’s what makes His perspective completely different from ours.
We see the request, God sees the road.
We see what would make us happy today, God sees what He is forming in us for tomorrow.
We see the closed door, God sees what is on the other side of it and everything beyond it.
So when God doesn’t respond the way we expected, the question isn’t always, “God, don’t You see me?” Sometimes the better question is: “God, what do You see that I can’t see yet?”
Pause & Reflect
Is there something you’ve been asking God for, or something He hasn’t allowed, that you’ve interpreted as Him not seeing you? What would change if you trusted that God sees something beyond what you can see right now?
The God Who Sees Me: What El Roi Really Means
There is a moment in Genesis 16 that has always been powerful to me, but after my conversation with Gabe, I began thinking about it differently.
Hagar was in the wilderness. And the circumstances that brought her there were complicated.
Abram and Sarai had made their own decisions while waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled. Hagar became part of that decision, and what followed was conflict, hurt, and eventually Hagar fleeing from Sarai into the wilderness. But Genesis tells us something beautiful about what happened next:
God found her there.
Genesis 16:7 says: “And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.” — Genesis 16:7, KJV. I don’t want us to move past the word found too quickly.
Hagar may have been away from everyone who knew her, but she was not outside the sight of God. And God didn’t simply see a woman sitting beside a fountain. He knew where she had come from. He knew what she had experienced.
He heard her affliction.
He gave her instruction.
And He spoke to her about what was ahead.
After this encounter, Hagar responded with words that have comforted generations of believers: “And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me…” — Genesis 16:13, KJV.
This is where we encounter the name commonly expressed as El Roi—the God who sees me.
But look again at what it meant for Hagar to be seen. God didn’t merely know where she was geographically.
He saw her circumstance.
He saw her affliction.
He saw where she had been.
And He knew where her story was going.
That’s the part I don’t want us to miss. When we say, “God sees me,” we aren’t simply saying that God can locate us. We’re saying that the God who sees us understands what we cannot fully see ourselves. Hagar knew the wilderness she was sitting in. God knew the road beyond the wilderness.
And He is still the God who sees.
El Roi
The God Who Sees Me
When God’s Answer Doesn’t Feel Like Being Seen
It’s comforting to say that God sees us when life is going well. It’s harder when we’ve been praying and nothing seems to be changing. Because if we’re honest, sometimes what we really mean when we ask God, “Do You see me?” is:
God, if You see me, why haven’t You done something about this? If You see how much this hurts, why haven’t You changed it? If You know what I need, why haven’t You provided it yet?
If You know how badly I wanted that relationship to work, why did it end?
If You saw how hard I worked for that opportunity, why did the door close?
If You heard my prayer, why am I still waiting?
Those are real questions. And I don’t believe faith requires us to pretend they aren’t. But sometimes we make an assumption without realizing it: If God sees what I need, then surely He will respond the way I think He should.
That’s where my conversation with Gabe came back to me.
He knew what he wanted.
I knew what he wanted too.
The difference wasn’t awareness. The difference was perspective. If I decided not to give him something or not to give it to him yet, it wouldn’t mean I had forgotten his request. It wouldn’t mean his desire didn’t matter to me. It would mean there were other things I had to consider that he wasn’t considering.
And that’s where the illustration between a parent and God has its limits. I can only make the best decisions I know how to make for my son. God actually knows what I don’t.
He knows where every road leads.
He knows what an open door would bring with it.
He knows what we’re ready to carry and where we still need to grow.
He knows what a relationship, opportunity, possession, position, or season could produce in us.
And He knows what comes next.
Isaiah 46:10 describes God as: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done…” — Isaiah 46:10, KJV
We don’t have that perspective.
We see today.
God sees beyond today.
That doesn’t mean we can explain every disappointment by saying, “God didn’t give me what I wanted because it would have been bad for me.” Scripture doesn’t give us permission to invent explanations God hasn’t given.
Some pain comes from other people’s choices. Some comes from our own choices. Some suffering is part of living in a fallen world. And sometimes we simply don’t know why God has allowed something.
But we can know this: His silence is not proof that He doesn’t see you.
Waiting is not proof that He has forgotten you, and an answer you don’t understand is not proof that He stopped paying attention. Sometimes faith means trusting the character of God when you don’t yet understand the activity of God.
God Sees Your Future While You See Your Present
This was the part of the conversation that my ten-year-old probably wasn’t thinking much about.
Gabe wanted VR cash.
That’s what mattered to him in that moment.
He wasn’t sitting beside me thinking, Mom, please make whatever decision will help develop my character and prepare me to become a wise, disciplined, godly man. He wanted the game. And honestly, at ten years old, I understand that. But as his mother, I have to think beyond what he wants today.
I told him, “Daddy and I know there are a lot of things you want.” And I started naming some of them. I wanted him to understand that we hadn’t forgotten.
We knew.
But knowing what he wanted didn’t mean our responsibility was to give him everything he wanted. We also had to ask:
What will this teach him?
What kind of appetite are we creating?
Are we teaching him that every desire should be immediately satisfied?
Are we developing gratitude or entitlement?
Patience or impatience?
Stewardship or constant consumption?
Because his dad and I aren’t only raising the boy sitting in the car with me today. We’re helping shape the man he’s becoming. And that’s when the lesson came back to me.
How often do we come before God focused almost entirely on what we want right now?
Lord, I need this door to open.
I need this situation to change.
I need this relationship to work.
I need this prayer answered.
I need You to fix this.
And sometimes what we’re asking for may even be good. But we’re looking at the request from the perspective of today.
God sees farther. He knows what He is developing in us through this season. He knows what needs to mature in us. He knows what we are ready to carry and what we aren’t. He knows what needs to be removed. He knows what needs to remain.
He knows where obedience today is preparing us for tomorrow.
Proverbs 3:5–6 says “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” — Proverbs 3:5–6, KJV.
That Scripture hits differently when you realize what it’s asking us to surrender: our need to understand everything before we trust God. Sometimes we want God to show us the entire road before we’ll take the next step.
But He doesn’t always do that.
Sometimes He gives us enough light for the step we’re standing on and asks us to trust Him with everything beyond it.
That’s why obedience matters so much. If God has made something clear through His Word, I don’t have to see everything He sees in order to follow Him.
I can obey Him because I trust the One who does.
My son doesn’t have to understand every parenting decision his father and I make before we’re responsible for making it.
And I don’t have to understand everything God is doing before He’s worthy of my trust.
I see the moment. God sees the road.
Worship Moment
God, I Need You – Adura Worship Collective
Sometimes trust begins with simply admitting that we don’t know what comes next, but we know Who we need. Take a few minutes before continuing and let this song become your prayer: “God, I need You.”
Sometimes Trusting God Requires Letting Go
Trusting the God who sees what we cannot see sounds comforting until His direction requires something from us. Because sometimes trust looks like surrender.
There may be habits God is confronting.
Ways of thinking that no longer agree with His Word.
Attitudes we’ve excused.
Relationships we need to establish healthier boundaries around.
Desires we’ve allowed to become too important.
Or parts of our character that God is asking us to submit to Him.
Sometimes we even defend those things by saying, “That’s just who I am.” But following Jesus means being willing to let Him transform us. Romans 12:2 says: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” — Romans 12:2, KJV.
Transformation means I cannot insist on remaining exactly as I am while asking God to lead me into everything He has for me.
There will be moments when His Word confronts me. There will be moments when obedience costs me something. There will be moments when I have to release what I want because God has made clear what He desires.
Jesus said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” — John 14:15, KJV. That’s where trust becomes more than a comforting thought. Trust becomes obedience. And obedience doesn’t always come with a full explanation.
Related Reading: What True Worship Really Costs: The Sacrifice Behind Real Surrender.
Sometimes God shows us what needs to change before we understand why the change matters. Sometimes He tells us to forgive before our feelings have caught up. Sometimes He calls us to wait when we’re ready to move. Sometimes His Word requires us to change the way we speak, respond, spend, pursue, or relate to other people.
And sometimes we have to admit that the biggest thing standing between us and obedience isn’t that God hasn’t spoken.
It’s that we don’t like what He said.
But if I truly believe God sees what I cannot see, then I have to leave room for this possibility: His instruction may be preparing me for something my current perspective cannot yet understand. That doesn’t mean we interpret every inconvenience as a secret message from God or assume every relationship that ends was divinely removed.
It means that when God’s Word is clear, we surrender.
We allow Him to correct us.
We allow Him to renew our minds.
We allow Him to develop our character.
And we trust that obedience to God is never wasted, even when we cannot yet see where He’s leading us.
Heart Check
Is there something God has already made clear through His Word that you’ve been reluctant to obey?
Instead of asking God to show you everything that comes next, ask Him for the grace to obey what He’s already shown you.
You Don’t Have to Remind God That You’re There
There was another part of my conversation with Gabe that stayed with me.
He was trying to manage my thoughts about him. He wanted to make sure I remembered the good grades. He wanted to remind me that he was doing well, and he wanted me thinking about how responsible he’d been because there was something he wanted from me.
In his words, he was trying to “butter us up.” And I told him, “You don’t have to do that.”
I hadn’t forgotten.
I saw the grades.
I remembered the conversations.
I knew what he wanted.
His request hadn’t disappeared from my mind simply because we weren’t talking about it at that moment. And I wonder how often we approach God with a similar fear. Not necessarily because we’re trying to “butter God up,” but because somewhere underneath our prayers is the anxiety that maybe we need to keep ourselves in front of Him.
Maybe if I pray harder.
Maybe if I say it again.
Maybe if I’m good enough.
Maybe if I do everything right.
Maybe then God will notice me.
But Jesus tells us something completely different about our Father. “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” — Matthew 6:8, KJV.
Before you ask, God already knows. That doesn’t mean we stop praying. Jesus wasn’t teaching His disciples that prayer is unnecessary. In fact, He immediately continued by teaching them how to pray.
Prayer matters.
Persistence matters.
Bringing our requests before God matters.
But prayer isn’t our way of supplying God with information He doesn’t have.
And prayer isn’t a performance we use to earn His attention.
We pray from a place of being seen, not in an attempt to become seen.
That’s an important difference. You don’t have to impress God into caring about you. You don’t have to convince Him that your need is important enough. You don’t have to perform well enough to keep yourself on His radar.
Your Father knows.
So keep praying.
Keep asking.
Keep seeking Him.
Keep bringing that desire before Him.
But you can release the fear that God might forget you if you stop trying to manage the outcome.
Prayer isn’t about reminding God that you’re there.
Prayer is relationship with the God who already sees you. It aligns our hearts with His and brings up deeper in relationship with Him.
What If “Not Yet” Doesn’t Mean God Forgot You?
Sometimes the hardest answer from God isn’t no; it’s waiting.
At least with a clear no, we know where we stand. But waiting can leave us wondering.
Did God hear me?
Should I keep praying?
Am I supposed to do something?
Did I misunderstand Him?
Has He forgotten about this?
Waiting can make us question things we were once confident about. But waiting does not mean God has stopped seeing you.
Psalm 27:14 says: “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”— Psalm 27:14, KJV. Biblical waiting isn’t pretending that we don’t care about the outcome. It isn’t sitting around with no emotion, no questions, and no desire for anything to change.
Waiting on God is continuing to trust Him while the answer is still unfinished from our perspective. And that’s difficult. Because we live inside the part of the story we can see.
We know how long we’ve been waiting.
We know how many times we’ve prayed.
We know how much we want the situation to change.
What we don’t know is everything God knows.
That’s why I don’t want to tell you that every delay means God is preparing something bigger.
Maybe He is.
But Scripture doesn’t give us permission to make that promise about every situation. I also can’t tell you that if you wait long enough, God will eventually give you exactly what you’ve been asking for. Sometimes His answer will be yes.
Sometimes it will be no.
Sometimes circumstances will unfold in ways we never anticipated, and sometimes we may never receive the explanation we wanted. But our confidence was never supposed to rest in our ability to predict God’s answer.
Our confidence rests in God’s character.
The same God who saw Hagar in the wilderness sees you in the waiting.
The same Father Jesus said already knows what you need has not suddenly forgotten your name. So if you’re in a season of “not yet,” don’t allow the waiting to convince you that you’ve become invisible.
Keep praying.
Keep obeying what God has already made clear.
Keep allowing Him to work in you.
Keep living faithfully while you wait.
And when your mind begins trying to figure out everything God hasn’t explained, come back to what you already know:
I may not know what God is doing yet, but I know He sees me here.
BEFORE THE WORLD SPEAKS, LET GOD SPEAK FIRST
When you’re waiting on God, your thoughts can get loud. Spend the next several mornings grounding yourself in Scripture before fear, questions, and everything else begins competing for your attention.
3 Things to Remember When You Feel Forgotten by God
There will be days when what you see around you doesn’t seem to match what you believe about God. When those days come, you don’t need to manufacture an explanation for everything that’s happening. Come back to what Scripture has already made clear.
1. God Sees What You’re Going Through
Your circumstances are not hidden from Him.
Hagar was in the wilderness, but she was never outside God’s sight.
And neither are you.
God sees the prayer.
He sees the waiting.
He sees the disappointment.
He sees the need.
He sees the questions you haven’t found answers for yet.
You may feel overlooked by people. You may be carrying something that very few people know about.
But you are not invisible to God.
2. God Sees What You Cannot See
This is where trust becomes necessary.
You can only make decisions based on what you know right now.
God’s knowledge isn’t limited that way.
You see the present circumstance. God sees beyond your present perspective.
You see what you want.
You see what hurts.
You see what hasn’t happened yet.
But you cannot see every consequence, every tomorrow, or every turn in the road ahead.
God can.
That’s why Proverbs tells us not to lean entirely on our own understanding.
Faith doesn’t mean pretending that our questions aren’t real.
Faith means recognizing that our perspective isn’t complete.
3. You Can Obey God Without Seeing Everything
Sometimes we want God to explain the entire plan before we’ll take the next step.
But often, He doesn’t.
He gives us His Word.
He gives us wisdom.
He gives us the next act of obedience.
And then He asks us to trust Him with what we cannot see.
Maybe your next step is forgiving someone.
Maybe it’s waiting instead of forcing something to happen.
Maybe it’s establishing a boundary.
Maybe it’s changing a habit that God’s Word has already confronted.
Maybe it’s continuing faithfully in something when you haven’t seen the fruit yet.
Whatever the situation, you don’t need to know everything God knows before you can obey what He’s already made clear.
You don’t have to see the whole road when you trust the One who does.
