Jesus Envisioned

What Did Jesus Do?

Where there is no vision, the people perish...
Proverbs 29.18

Having a compass is essential for wilderness survival; but even the best compass can't help you if you don't know where you are going. Boy Scouts love to hike, but hiking is not wandering without purpose or direction, there is always a clear destination in mind. A lot of people go through life with lots of good tools, but since they don't have a clear sense of where their life is ultimately heading they are aimless, lost. Jesus recognized that all of us are like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6.34), so He came to provide lost sheep with direction. Jesus envisioned.

It's like this, Jesus could see who a person could become. He envisioned the bind able to see, the deaf able to hear, the lame able to walk. The Lord spoke these visions to the afflicted, and their belief in the visions became the reality. Jesus envisioned.

All Simon, the brother of Andrew, could see in the mirror when he first met the Lord was that he was a hopeless sinner (Luke 5.8). But Jesus envisioned Peter, the rock on whom his Church would be built (Matthew 16.18), and so the fisherman became a fisher of men. Jesus envisioned.

Everyone knew the Pharisee from Tarsus who was the ruthless persecutor of the early Church (Acts 8.1-3). But the risen Lord Jesus envisioned the apostle who would be the Church's most ardent defender, its most vigorous missionary, its most tireless evangelist, and the New Testament's most prolific writer. And so Saul became Paul. Jesus envisioned.

While His disciples marveled at the splendor of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem, the Lord envisioned the day when not one of the great stones would remain on another (Matthew 24.2). But the risen Christ also revealed to John a vision of a far more splendid Jerusalem, a new Jerusalem, a heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21.1-4), the very place where God will dwell with man for eternity. Jesus envisioned.

Recalling the words from Proverbs 29.18, and putting a New Testament “spin” on them, apart from Christ's vision of who we are in Him we shall surely perish. The challenge of the Gospel is to bring people to the place where they can see themselves in Christ, a new creation (2Corinthians 5.17). It's not like the ridiculously popular “reality” makeover shows, which are just about cosmetic changes. What Jesus envisions is nothing short of our total transformation, the old self passing away and someone completely new being created in Him. We can hardly begin to imagine who we shall be in Christ, but we can be confident that when He appears we shall be like Him (1John 3.2), for the Lord envisioned us being with Him forever. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4