Where Do I Find Jesus Series

Where Do I Find Jesus?

Deuteronomy 4:29, Jeremiah 29:11, John 14:23

Opener:

Choose two contestants to come up and do the car tag recognition

--------slides available upon request-------------

Introduction:

In November, 1975, 75 convicts started digging a secret tunnel designed to bring them up at the other side of the wall of Saltillo Prison in northern Mexico.

On April 18, 1976, guided by pure genius, they tunneled up into the nearby courtroom in which many of them had been sentenced.

The surprised judges returned all 75 to jail.

Sometimes your dedication to accomplish something can be misguided.

Such is the way that many people are looking for Jesus: Movies, TV, religious holidays, books, history, art, etc. Unfortunately, most look for Jesus in wrong places.

Why should you look for Him and find Him?

Jesus came to “seek & save the lost” (Luke 19:10)

Lost must seek & find Him to be saved (Matt. 11:28-30)

Scriptures tell us how to find both Jesus and the Father…

"But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.” Deuteronomy 4:29

“You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13

“Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” John 14:23

Jesus does not make it difficult to find Him in today’s busy, media-blitzed, technology saturated society.

Many people still have difficulty finding Him as they would someone in a lost crowd (show “Where’s Jesus” slide” -- available upon request).

Often times, people have difficulty finding Jesus because they have “blinders” on--Blinders are what farmers or carriage drivers use to put on horses to keep their attention focused straight ahead so as not to distract from their task.

Since the scriptures tell us that we can find Jesus with our heart, sometimes we become blinded in finding Jesus because we have spiritual blinders on our eyes. Why?

First we are born ignorant. We are spiritual blinded because of our own self—that’s what the Bible refers to as “the flesh”.

Many times we are unable to find Jesus because we are blind to our own hang-ups we have grown up with.

What are hang-ups? They are ideas that you’ve told yourself so many times that your thinking is now conformed to it rather than including any ideas or thoughts from other sources.

We are born ignorant--Lacking information, so we gather facts and experience from what we are taught by others--and also what we learn on our own - by ourselves.

Learning is a fun facet of human nature. We all enjoy doing it. In your stage of life now, you don’t enjoy learning which requires hard disciplined study. You prefer education from easy and entertaining visual aids.

Why, then, when learning is fun whether if you like to do it through disciplined study or easy visual aides, do we often find ourselves refusing to learn?

There are times when our minds are closed to new ideas, especially spiritual ideas. Especially when it comes to that of Where to find Jesus

Our inner self “the flesh” says to our mind: Who needs Him? I have learned all I need to know about Him.

So I know, I am educated, I know about Jesus….I knew about him since I was a little child…but do you know where to find Him?

The second reason for our spiritual blinding is that:

The enemy doesn’t want us to understand the greater things of God.

If we are blind to God’s truth, or refuse to look past what we already know about Jesus, we get no more blessings.

Paul explained this in his second letter to the Corinthian church, "In their case the god of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God." 2 Cor. 4:4

If you truly want to discover where you can find Jesus, then you must keep our minds open to new revelations from God on a consistent basis---not just when you want to “feel spiritual”.

Our minds must be set on, “"I don’t want to miss anything God has for me. I will look for Him in all things, at all times.”

Not just on Wednesday nights, nor will I hope to meet Him at Aquire The Fire, or Falls Creek, or SNL…although we hope that you do find Him there—but don’t just limit Him to being there.

Don’t put Jesus in a box and expect Him to come out when you wind the toy up like a Jack In The Box.