What Are You Looking For? Part II
Day 28
A Countdown to Listening to Jesus in the land of the Bible
What Are You Looking For?: Part II
Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew,[a] it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom”… “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.”
John 3:3,5 CEB
Cold, colder, warmer, warmer…hot! That’s what we hear when we play the game of looking for something and a person is trying to lead us with cold and warm clues. The closer we are to finding what we’re looking for the “hotter” we get. Then, when what we’re looking for is right under our noses but we still can’t see it, the clue giver says, “Now you’re red hot!” Sometimes we just can’t see what’s in plain sight. You know. We can’t see the forest for all the trees.
Yesterday, Day 28, We heard Jesus ask the question, “What are you looking for?” Today we hear Him tell us how to look for what we’re looking for. In John 3, Nicodemus was seeking answers to questions he didn’t know how to ask. He admitted that Jesus was from God, but his heart couldn’t quite believe this man from Nazareth was the answer to all the Jews longing and looking for the Messiah. So, without his even having asked a direct question, Jesus answers the real question on Nicodemus’ heart – “Are you the One?” Are you our Savior?”
Jesus offered Nicodemus words of life for everyone to hear. His answer was for everyone because we’re all still asking the same questions. The problem is too often we’re looking for answers in all the wrong places. Jesus told him that to enter God’s Kingdom, he must be born again. Nicodemus thought he was already in the Kingdom. But Jesus makes it clear no one can even see the Kingdom unless he or she is born anew…born of the Spirit.
Was that really too hard to understand? When Nicodemus asked Jesus how he could enter again into his mother’s womb, can’t you just hear Jesus wanting to say, “you’re getting colder”? Jesus knew Nicodemus was getting “warmer” when he recognized Jesus as a great man from God, but He needed him to see that He wasn’t just a “great man” …He was and is God.
As we embark on our journey to the Holy Land 28 days from now, we need to hear Jesus’ question, “What are you looking for?”. But let’s be sure we hear the clues He’s giving us also. What awaits us in Galilee and Jerusalem is our getting, “warmer”, and “warmer” as we walk where Jesus walked. But we won’t find the answers to the Kingdom just by touching stones. We must open our hearts and allow the stones to shout to us that we must be born of the Spirit. Then, we will not only see the Holy Land… we will enter the Kingdom of God.
Day 28 has begun…
Shalom,
Pastor Brad
image credit: http://discoverynews.us/BIBLE%20CHARACTERS/NICODEMAS,_The_Religious_and_Respectable_Sinner.html
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