Introduction- Good Morning Church!
Bless His name as we come together to hear His word and respond to His calling.
Prayer-
Our church leadership has been in a time of fasting and prayer as a church with the sole purpose of wanting the Lord to intervene in one specific area of our life in the church. We are all on the same page and asking the Lord to do something that we ourselves have not been able to see or do by ourselves.
What things in your life might the Lord say is needing your prayers and your attention?
Time is the biggest excuse for not getting done what is needed in our lives. If we only had more time!
Sharing some words from my friend… a survey he found where most people said that time was a problem in their lives.
The question asked was... “Do you think that you are accomplishing all that is needed at your work place? The results came back that a low percentage said no… that they needed about 10% more time to accomplish that. A higher percentage came back no…that they needed 25 % more time to accomplish the task. The last group, well over 50% of the people surveyed said no…that it would take over 50% more time to accomplish the task. Here a spoiler alert… you cannot be given one more minute in your day or anyone else’s. You get 24 hours just like everyone else. The problem is not time…it is time management, it is your priorities, it is not being distracted by the less important so that you can accomplish the more important. Now when you say this, most people get up in arms because no one believes they waste time.
During prayer time Wednesday morning, I shared that the Lord during my fasting and praying gave me three words… I see you. I had no idea what He was going to do with those words for a Sunday message. I SEE YOU.
I could not even set a text this morning because there are so many texts that say or reference that God sees us where we are at and numerous scriptures that tell us how God sees us and looks at us.
How God sees us as new believers 2 Cor. 5:17- “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
How He sees us as connected with Him- John 15:5- “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
How He sees our commitment to Him- Colossians 3:3- “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God”
How He sees us in serving – 2 Timothy 1:7- “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control”
I SEE YOU…
Those could be words of comfort and those could be words of rebuke.
I see you when you are hurting is a source of comfort and the words I see you when you are in rebellion and doing things that are not pleasing is a rebuke and warning to get things right between you and the Lord.
All of us want the Lord to see us when we are hurting, when we are suffering in things beyond our control.
But we don’t want God to see us when we are doing things that we know are not pleasing and things that He has given us instruction about in the past.
So my words today is that God sees you! He sees you in your hurts and sufferings and He sees us when we are far from God doing things that He has talked to us about.
So when we call out for God to see us, make sure we understand that He sees all… that nothing done is secret is lost in the darkness. It is a warning and an encouragement for the church this morning.
Illustration-
I think of David… 2 Samuel 11…He is the King of Israel at war with his neighbors and he is at the castle away from the battle and walks atop his roof and sees a bathing young women. He calls for his servants to tell him who that woman is and then she was sent for. He sleeps with her and to make a long story longer, she gets pregnant from him and he begins a plan to cover it up. He attempts to get his leader Uriah to come back from battle to sleep with his wife Bathsheba so no one would know. Uriah won’t do it because he has honor amongst his men. He then orders that the leader be returned to battle and put out front to be killed and that is what happened. The problem is long before King David got Bathsheba pregnant. I think God has a sense of humor of showing us our faults when he identifies the bathing women that David slept with as Bathsheba. The problem is David was not out with his army in battle and when he was where he shouldn’t be with someone he shouldn’t be with, there will be consequences.
If the Devil was allowed to go back and forth heaven to earth with the Lords permission, not his blessing to come against Job, a righteous man of God, how much more dangerous is it for a believer to be doing something they know is not right in the eyes of the Lord?
We want the Lord to see us in our struggles, but we hide from him and don’t want Him to see us in our sin and rebellion.
llustration-
Most know the story of our District Superintendent Pastor Kerry Willis growing up in the Harkers Island area of North Carolina and that his two brothers Bill and Steven are ministers also with the Nazarene church. Their father a shrimp boat captain who raised them in the fear and reverence of the Lord and he impacted their lives. His desire was for them to serve the Lord, and they have done that with success and God’s richest blessings. I know all three of them and they know that I use this illustration as a way to show God’s goodness, mercy, and kindness. While I love their testimony, that is far from the way that God got a hold of my heart and ministered to me. They grew up on a small island and I grew up in the big city of Milwaukee. They caught fish and I ran for my life and had to fight my way to survive. God called them to himself and God also called me to Himself but we got there by different journeys. That doesn’t make one better than the other but different to show God’s great love for us.
At least two times in my life I could have lost my life and if I had died, I believe that I would have been lost for eternity without Jesus. Without going into great detail of these events, I accepted the Lord at 14 years old as a rebellious teenager laughing at Billy Graham on TV one moment and crying to be saved and preaching the good news a few minutes later. But because of life and circumstances, I walked away and never plugged in and went away from the Lord. ANYBODY KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT? I knew better, but was always going to do it at a better time. Two times I put my life in danger. One time in 1976-77 I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and doing the wrong things and had a gun pointed at my head and I was robbed. Gunmen pointed his gun at my head and asked “did I get yours.”I easily could have lost my life that day.
The other time I was a newly married man with a one year daughter managing a grocery store as the night manager. One night, my cashier was given an extortion note on the scale with complete instructions how to proceed to give them money. To make a very long story with a lot of details, details that are irrelevant to God’s mercy and grace shorter, I was to take this money to a designated area in a rough part of Milwaukee. I had called the police, the thief knew my car, knew my schedule and I was to drop this money off. A detective came and told me everything that I would have to do if I was willing to participate to catch this thief. The detective was lying in the back of my car on the floor and I was now driving to the spot told to me to drop off the money like a scary police movie. I pulled up to the phone booth a few car lengths away and was told by the detective to get out of the car and put the envelope in the phone booth and come back to car. I did as I was told and I thought why did I agree to this? I felt like I could have been shot walking to the phone booth. I put the envelope in the phone booth and quickly came back to the car and drove around the corner. As I drove around the block, the police radio the detective had said they have one and in pursuit of another. Within minutes, the radio came back on and they were caught. It felt a long drive to the police station and I was put in a large room where other detectives were and in a few minutes they brought a man that looked about 16 years old into the room. I was told that this is the man that made the call and was attempting to rob the store. After they took him into another room, almost as fast, these men with shot guns came in and began hanging up these rifles. The detective must have seen my look of amazement and said that these sharpshooters were in the cemetery directly across the street from the phone booth and were watching every move made.
Here’s my point of sharing these stories. God used people from two different backgrounds and journeys to serve Him. One came with less drama and consequences and one came with rebellion and struggles that could have been avoided.
When we are praying that God would see us, we need to realize that God sees all, not just what we want him to see. He sees us in our hurts and He sees us in our sins. We don’t get one without the other.
Drifting is a sign that we are moving away from God. Drifting is the silent killer of most Christians. We get farther out to sea and we cannot see God anymore.
The problem with drifting is that by the time that you realize you are drifting it is usually too late and you have gone far from the Lord.
As Pastor I scramble for answers for our church daily- fasting yes- some things only come from fasting. Prayer-yes. Study of God’s word- yes, fellowship yes.
Most problems for believers is drifting and not doing what we know to do and after awhile we are far from God.
Quick (3) things to know if you are drifting away from God
Are you growing?
If you are the same in your spiritual walk with God, or worse declining, you are not where you are suppose to be, you are drifting away from God. You should be reading God’s Word, studying God’s Word, praying daily, and wanting to be in the house of the Lord. It is where every week you should want to come with a heart of expectation that God wants to speak to you individually and corporately with other believers. You want to be with the Lord and God’s people.
Are you sensitive to the things of God? A heart drifting from God is a heart that doesn’t see the things that God sees.
The things that would make us want to be a part of the kingdom of God.
A part that has not time for God, has no desire to support the things of God so we are not faithful in our giving.
Priorities are blurred and we make excuses of why we cannot be in God’s house doing God’s business.
The things that break God’s heart should be the things that break your heart.
Are you willfully sinning?
We all make mistakes and my past is just a reminder of how good God is in giving second and third chances. We should be convicted and wanting to make a change in our lifestyle and our wanting to please God more than ourselves.
Willful and repeated sin is a dangerous spot for a believer because we get comfortable in a spiritually danger spot. We put eternity is danger for a moment of time pleasure.
Close
God see you! God see me! What is He seeing? How can we make sure it is pleasing to Him?
If you are going through tough times and you are doing everything you know to do. Know the Lord see you! He is not blind to what your going through. Hold on tight to what you know to do and wait for the light of day because it is coming. Joy comes in the morning!
If you are here and feel like no one appreciates you, you have given all and wonder if you are making a difference- He sees you! Greeter, nursery worker, teacher, maintenance worker, your works are not unnoticed, the eyes of the Lord sees you!
Single parent, caregiver, grandparent… He sees you!
To the one that is shipwrecked and you know that it is because of not listening to the Lord,
He sees you and is anxiously waiting for you to turn back to Him.
Respond to the still small voice of God because there are a lot of voices yelling for your attention but there is only one that is wanting to save you , the rest want to drag you down.
In a moment, we are going to prayer and I am trusting that the Lord has already been speaking to you this morning,
He has already shown you what He has seen and what you need to do this morning-
lean into Jesus.
Receive His Grace and Mercy and Love this morning and come close to Him.
It will be the most important decision you have ever made.
Prayer
