“Come and see!” John 1: 39, 46

Here’s is my conclusion, right from the start—the only way to know Jesus is to experience Him for yourself! And the best argument in favor of Jesus and Christianity is actually not an argument at all!

This is how the next entry in my Gospel transpires—
John said, “There’s the Messiah,” and two of his disciples (one named Andrew and the other remained unnamed) left him and followed Jesus. That’s got to be humbling!
The two said, “Rabbi (which means teacher), where are you staying?” And He said, “Come and see.” (I need to remember that line- it’s going to come in handy later in this story and in mine!)
The first thing Andrew did after he “came and saw” Jesus was to go find his brother Simon (I need to remember that priority- it will come in handy too!)
Simon got renamed Cephas, or Peter and Jesus found Philip.
The first thing Philip did after getting “found” was to go find Nathanael- (there seems to be a predictability in this story- I better remember this part too!)
Nathanael started an argument about origins and ethnic condemnations to which Philip had no debatable response. He simply quoted what he had heard from Jesus, “Come and see!” (why do I make things so hard? If it works for Jesus it will probably work for me!)
Jesus blew Nathanael away with a wisp of His divine insight and Nathanael believed. (another good lesson about who does the best persuading- me or God?!)

So what did I learn today?
1. Introduce my friends to Jesus even if, or hopefully so that, they might connect with Him even more than with me.
2. If I am one of those introduced to Jesus I pray my first response will be just to tell someone else what I found- or shall I say WHOM I found.
3. The way to introduce them to Him is by personal experience- “Come and see Who I have seen! Come and meet Who I have met!”
4. And if people don’t like the One I am introducing or can’t believe how great that introduction might be, it’s not my job to defeat them in an argument, it’s just to invite them to see for themselves what I have seen.
5. And the most important lesson for me today- I better have met Him and seen Him for myself, or I really have nothing to say!

Have a great day seeing Jesus so you too can invite those closest to you to “come and see!”
Pastor Rich

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 5:01 am and is filed under GMU. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.