I had made a post on Facebook yesterday about the new song What Would You Do by Elevation Worship and someone commented about how that song made them reflect on “would Christ recognize me if He walked in the room?”
That question was so profound and really calls for a heart check. This morning when thinking on that same question while listening to the song, a new question posed in my spirit...
Would we recognize Christ if He walked into the room?
The religious leaders (during the time when Christ walked the earth) missed it...They didn’t recognize Christ when He stood right before them. So much so that they killed the very One they had prayed for...the very One they’d been waiting on. They didn’t recognize the Redeemer for their religious practices. They didn’t recognize the Savior for their sacred traditions. They were familiar with the Text (the Old Testament) but not the Living Word. This is what happens when we focus on religion and neglect relationship.
Relationship is what sets Christianity apart from every other religion. Not only is our God the True and Living God, but we are able to have a relationship with Him!
I can read a novel all day, every day for weeks and not recognize the author when he/she walks into the room. Why? Because I’m familiar with their literature but not their character. I haven’t spent time in their presence or gotten to know them. I barely know their face aside from a small picture of on the back of their book cover.
We can at times get caught up on reading the Word just as something to check off of our to-do list and miss the very heart and character of God within It.
The Pharisees thought that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God because they did not agree with the things He said and did. They believed it went against God. However, Christ was doing exactly what God has instructed. Christ was displaying the very heart and nature of God...the Pharisees just weren’t familiar with His heart. He wasn’t what they had formulated in their minds so they missed Him when He appeared to them in the flesh.
Some of us are “followers” of Christ. We go to church, attend Bible study, dress “like a Christian should dress,” talk “like a Christian should talk,” and serve on every committee...but we don’t really know Christ. We must be careful to experience God for Who He Is and not just for what we expect Him to be or what we’ve designed for Him to be in our own minds. Our minds are limited. Christ is too immenses and limitless to reside in that box. As David Platt says, “we were created in the Image or God but we keep trying to create God in our image.” We miss God when we try to make Him into something we’ve created.
For some of us, we are familiar with Christ’s Presence. For others of us, His Presence is foreign. This is why we can all be in the same room but only some of us experience God when He moves and others are wondering why people are “doing all that.” This is why some of us will be in awe when the Spirit of God falls in the place of worship and others will sit there confused by the shouting, sobbing and crying aloud...because they don’t recognize when God enters a room.
Allow God to reveal exactly Who He Is to you. Spend time with Him getting to know His Presence.
May we all grow in our relationship with Christ and not just religious traditions so that He may recognize us and we Him when He walks into the room.
May we be able to acknowledge when the King is in the room.
“He came into the very world He created, but the world didn’t recognize Him.”
John 1:10
“Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him. And at that moment He disappeared! They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as He talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?””
Luke 24:31-32