Seeing Jesus

In John 12 we read an account of a group of people coming to Philip and the apostles saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” (John 12:21) Just a short time later, in John 14, as Jesus was talking with his disciples preparing them for His death, He talked with them about The Father. In verse 8, Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus wanted them to understand that seeing Him as seeing The Father.

Now, move forward several weeks. Much has happened. Life and priorities and understanding have truly been changed. Consider this assessment of the disciples as recorded in Acts 4:13. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.

The world still needs to see Jesus. Some are asking; some don’t know that they need to see Jesus. But everyone needs to see Jesus. He is their only hope! As Christians, disciples of Christ, it is our job to show Jesus. However, we cannot show Him to others if we haven’t seen Him ourselves. We cannot get bogged down in the routine and miss seeing Jesus. Our constant prayer must be, “Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.”

On Sunday mornings, currently I am preaching a series from Isaiah 53. I am striving above everything else to present Jesus. This week, we will consider “The Man Of Sorrows”. We realize that sorrow is a part of life. Christ came to bear our sorrows and experienced sorrows in His own life. May we truly see Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, and understand that His sorrows can result in our everlasting joy.

“Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.”