Look, Behold, Gaze

Transcript

Greetings in Jesus’ name! Welcome to this beautiful day and this beautiful new morning.

Wherever you are in life today, I pray you will see Jesus, you will see His manifestation, and you will experience Him everywhere you go, everything you do, every person you are in touch with, I hope that you would see Jesus in every situation and every circumstance. A physical, tangible manifestation of Jesus is our greatest hope, that is why we look forward to our tomorrow. Because He lives, we will face tomorrow with all the boldness and the courage that we can muster. He is our ultimate reason to be alive.

Revelations 1:7 – “Look! He is coming with the clouds. Everyone will see him, even the ones who stuck a sword through him. All people on earth will weep because of him. Yes, it will happen! Amen.”

The ‘Book of Revelations’ it gives a lot of dramatic things that are going to happen on the earth and at the same time, it is an invitation for the church to look closely, to look deeper, to lift our eyes, to behold, to gaze upon something that is about to happen. Although the ‘Book of Revelations’ was written thousands of years ago and adding to it the fact that God knew that Jesus is going to wait for another, couple of thousand years before He returns to the earth, the fact that He is telling the church to look, to behold, to keep your eyes open, to be alert, to be expectant to see Jesus, that is surprising.

You will generally tell someone to look out when the person is arriving, but if the person is a long way off, there is no reason for us to keep looking there are more productive things that you can do by not constantly looking outside for your guests to arrive, and most of us do not have the vision to look beyond a particular distance, forget about seeing beyond a few thousand years. None of us have the grace to see and wait for that long, and yet the instruction to the church was to look, to gaze upon, to behold because He is coming with the clouds.

The church was supposed to live each moment of its time, here on earth like Jesus is about to come today; like Jesus is about to come right now, like He is about to be manifested immediately, that’s how the church was supposed to live here on the earth. However, we have gotten so comfortable with the world around us, that we have taken our eyes off of the coming Jesus and we have put it on all the blessings, provisions, and goodness that we get to experience here on the earth.

One thing I would like to remind you is that this world is a temporary place for us, this world is only for a particular season in our lives, and our eternal home is where Jesus is; when He comes upon this earth, that is when it will become our eternal home, when we get to go where He is, that will become our eternal permanent home.

Wherever we live today, whatever we do today, wherever we are today is all temporary, that is why the Bible says, ‘‘Look! He is coming with the clouds. Everyone will see him, even the ones who stuck a sword through him.” This includes Christians, Non-Christians, atheists, and believers, the scripture is clear – everyone will see Him, even the ones who stuck a sword into Him, pierced Him, and crucified Him, even those who are responsible for the physical death of Jesus, those who are responsible for the persecution of the body of Jesus and the persecution of the church, every single one of them will see Jesus.

And the scripture says, “All people on the earth they will mourn, they will weep because of Him, there will be great wailing upon the entire planet because they see Him.” What would our lives look like if we live each moment of our day, each day of our week, each week of every month, each month of the year, and every year of our life with this picture in front of us; where Jesus is coming back on the clouds and everyone will see Him, even the ones that persecute Him and there will be great weeping on the earth.

If we can live every day of our lives with this picture, if that becomes our hope, our drive to evangelize, our motivation to worship, our motivation to reason why we pray, why we disciple people, why we host revival, why we pursue the heart of God here on earth, why we try to bring heaven on the earth, if that becomes our sole motivating factor, can you imagine how our churches will look like?

How will the choices and decisions that we make differ, how will our perspective or attitude be towards our brothers/ sisters? We must make this our motto of living that – I want to see Jesus, I want to experience Him, that He will forever be before my eyes, and that the only lens I will use to view others is the lens of Jesus.

I hope this word is encouraging you today. The Lord is saying, ‘ Look, behold and gaze.’ I repeat – ‘Look, behold and gaze’, He is coming back.

Prayer: Father we pray for every child of yours that is part of the church of Jesus, here on earth. I pray that today you will renew our vision, that our eyes will be fixed on you, on the coming of Jesus, and every moment we will live with this picture before our eyes, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen