Eye Contact With God
- Steve Quillian
- Apr 27
- 4 min read
How His Gaze Burns, Refines, and Heals
April 27, 2025
Written during Sunday service with my son, Korban
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Peter’s denial of Jesus —
not just the words or the act itself, but a small, piercing detail:
the eye contact at the end.
Peter, having denied Christ three times, locks eyes with Him across the courtyard.
In that moment, Jesus sees Peter — fully, knowingly — not with condemnation, but with something deeper.
It made me realize:
Even in our denial, even in our sin-influenced behavior, God makes eye contact with us.
He sees us.
He keeps seeing us.
And what does He do?
He doesn’t turn away.
He doesn’t humiliate.
He doesn’t crush us.
Instead, He keeps going.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
One look was enough.
Eye contact with God — it’s something I saw again today in Psalm 139:
“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there.
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.”
His gaze is ongoing and active.
It’s not something we summon.
It’s always there.
What changes isn’t His gaze — it’s our interpretation of it.
When we fall, when we succeed, God sees.
And His seeing is steady, not swayed by our highs or lows.
In our sin, He does not destroy us.
In our victories, He does not idolize us.
He simply sees.
But His gaze is not passive.
Eye contact with God burns.
Not to consume us, but to refine us.
It burns away the parts of us that shouldn’t be.
It sets the “weeds” on fire — the things that choke life.
And though the weeds resist and scream, the faithful heart stands firm, trusting God even when it hurts.
“Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there.
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.”
– Psalm 139:7–8
When we run from God’s gaze, we still burn — but differently.
We burn deep scars into ourselves —
scars of denial, shame, rebellion —
wounds that harden and try to block us from seeing Him clearly.
We aren’t the first ones to run and hide from God’s gaze.
Adam and Eve did it first — hiding among the trees after they sinned.
It’s almost instinctive now.
We come by it naturally — the urge to run, to cover up, to avoid being seen.
But when we catch ourselves hiding, running, lying, or covering —
it’s a warning sign.
A flashing light on the dashboard of the soul.
Because the truth is: we’re not hiding from God.
We’re hiding from the truth about ourselves.
And it’s exactly this truth — once brought into the light — that can set us free.
The sooner we stop running and let His gaze find us,
the shallower the scars —
and the faster the healing.
The Good News is this:
God, being a consuming fire, burns even those scars away.
His fire doesn’t just expose — it heals, it purifies, and it restores.
The same eye contact that once pierced through our rebellion also gently burns away the damage we caused.
His fire makes us whole again.
How we respond to eye contact with God determines what happens next.
If we misinterpret it, we might run — and burn in rebellion.
If we submit, we stay — and burn differently.
When we stay, it’s not a burning to destroy us, but a burning to heal, to purify, to transform.
What does it take to stay?
It takes being still.
Submission.
Perseverance.
Endurance.
Faith.
Trust.
It takes the obedience to let God burn away what needs to go —
to place it on the Cross and let it die there —
even though everything inside us may scream, kick, and try to run.
It takes the perseverance to see it through.
Hebrews 12 reminds us:
“Endure hardship as discipline;
God is treating you as His children.”
The fire of God is not punishment —
it’s purification.
It’s training.
It’s for our good.
It’s to share in His holiness.
It’s painful —
but it produces the best fruit.
Eye contact with God is not about shame.
It’s about grace.
Peter denied Christ — but Jesus had already seen it coming, and loved him still.
There is grace for us too.
Our failures do not change the goodness or the work of God.
While we were yet sinners — Christ died for us.
A Prayer:
Dear God,
Hold me still when I want to run.
Help me endure.
Help me see Your way through.
Let me experience Your resurrection
on the other side of obedience.
Amen.
Reflection:
Where in your life are you tempted to run from God’s gaze —
and what might happen if you stayed instead?
コメント