I heard a sermon this past Sunday that sparked the following thoughts…
The Jewish people knew that Christ was coming. They knew that they would have a Messiah – it was foretold to them so many times! And yet, when He came, so many of them missed Him. They didn’t think He was their Messiah. They were looking for some idea of who He would be that didn’t fit. They were looking so much for their idea of what their Messiah would look like and act like and be like, that they didn’t recognize the real Him.
And I thought of my own life… How often, in a particular situation, do I expect God to act a certain way – to answer my prayer a certain way, to change a certain thing? Then, as I am expecting Him to do a certain thing, I completely miss His real work!
I had an example of this in my own life last week. Over my lunch break, I discovered that my wallet was missing. I retraced my steps from earlier that morning and didn’t find it. I called the store I had been in to see if they had it and they did not. I looked frantically through the car two times and didn’t find it. I searched the parking lot where I had parked and didn’t find it. I was praying that the Lord would let me find it.
Then I called my bank to see if anyone had been using my card… and someone had. Oh no! Someone had stolen my wallet and was using it at gas stations and fast food places in the area. They had already used it five times when I called the bank! I proceeded to call my banks to cancel the credit cards, etc. I thought through everything that was in my wallet and called the various places that I needed to.
Later, I was thinking through the search for my wallet and saw how God had been at work in the situation. He had let me find my wallet! Granted, it was easy to miss that because He didn’t let me find it the way I had wanted to find it (stashed under a seat in the car or something). Had the people not been making those charges to my card, I would have assumed that it was still lost in my car somewhere and I needed to look harder. I would not know “for sure” that my wallet had actually be lost. But, because of those charges I found my wallet to be lost.
How great God is! I need to stop putting Him in a box and looking for Him in the ways that I think He will be found… I need to look for Him in the ways that He is to be found working in my life.
“But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him.” – Luke 24:16
