MAY 18 "JESUS IS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU"

  I will be the last person to stand up the religious folks, especially the Pharisees, but it must have been hard to look at some man standing in front of you, claiming to be "The Son of God", miracles or not. I have seen miracles happen but never began to look at the people who performed them and think, "is this God?".  Now you can say, "well we know better today". How many times has God stood before us and we did not believe that it was Him? It's hard to see God and accept that it's God you see. And I mean this as a metaphor, imagine how much harder this is, when it's literal! Even Christians when witnessing a tremendous miracle stand there and say, "can this really be?". We almost try to dismiss, what we have witnessed, "maybe they really didn't have cancer, they were mis-diagnosed?"  We believe..., but we don't believe. I believe in you Lord, just don't stand in front of me and say, "This is me, God" because then I won't believe. What I've noticed about church members is they'll believe in God; until they have to believe in God for something for themselves. They believe in God for "everybody else", just not for themselves. I don't have to see God to believe in Him for your needs or your faith, I just have to say, "He is, He is mighty, He is real and He'll help you". I am just spouting out religious truths, but don't have to see God in anyway to speak them and pronounce them over others. When Elisha is overwhelmed and defeated in his mind and he has proclaimed religious truths to so many, bu in his time of need, he cannot see God or recognize Him. God opens Elisha's eyes to see and then Elisha is able to see God, right there with him. We can judge the Pharisees, our friends, our family for not being able to see Jesus when He's standing right in front of them, but I wonder how much better we are at it?

Sure, we saw Jesus for salvation, just like Peter, when he finally recognized that it was Jesus, Peter said, "depart from me I am a sinful man".  And so we have seen Jesus, as Christians, for sure, in this area, but how many times after, have we failed to see Jesus right in front of us, saying, "this is me, this is my work, my hand in all of this". We turn away and say, "no, this isn't you". And like the Pharisees, Jesus may not look the way you think He should look, He may not be doing what you think you would be doing if you were Jesus and so you look and say, "this isn't Jesus" and walk away. And so before we cast stones on these religious people, I dare say, that there has been many times, since you became a Christian, maybe even now, that you have failed to recognize Jesus and only to your own harm and undoing. Never mind the Pharisees, they are dead, think about yourself, is Jesus standing right in front of you, right now and you are failing to see Him? Remove your preconceived notions of what you think He should look like; and be doing and be open. Think of what the others said that were standing around, they said, "this man doesn't sound like a man who is demon possessed".  God may not look like you think He should or be doing what you think He should be doing, but listen to what He is saying to do. He may not look like you think (perhaps the wisdom has come from your unsaved brother) he may not being doing what you would do (you were laid off your job) but in the end, listen and remove preconceived notions and you may realize, Jesus was standing right in front of you and you did not realize it.