The One Who Saw You First
By Pastor Justin Cooper
I have shaken a lot of hands on a Sunday morning. I try to make my way through the crowd and greet everyone I can, and still I know the truth — in a room that full, somebody always slips by unseen. Maybe it's the mother who was up half the night and up again before dawn. Maybe it's the man who feels like nobody would notice if he stopped coming. Maybe, today, it's you.
So let me tell you about a man named Nathanael, because he knew that feeling too. He was sitting under a fig tree, just another face in the shade, when someone came running to tell him the Messiah had arrived. He was skeptical. He was tired of hoping. And then Jesus looked at him and said one thing that undid him completely.
"Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee."
— John 1:48
I saw you. Three words, and the skeptic melted. Because Jesus had noticed him before he ever went looking. And that is the thing I most want you to hear from me today.
You and I spend so much energy wondering if we matter, if anyone is really paying attention. And the whole time, the God of heaven has His eyes on you. I said it Sunday and I will say it again right here:
"If you could see you the way Jesus sees you, you'd get saved in a hurry, too."
Pastor Justin Cooper
Gospel Light Baptist Church
Think about it honestly. If someone told you the house was on fire, you would not stop to pray about whether to run. If you were drowning and a rope landed in your hands, you would not pause to inspect it. You would move. The reason so many of us wait on God is not that the danger isn't real — it's that we have never let ourselves see what He sees when He looks at us.
And here is what steadies me every time: you didn't come looking for God, but God's already looking out for you. You have never once been off His mind. Not on your worst day. Not when you forgot Him entirely. He saw you before you saw Him.
You are not invisible.
You never were.
Before the noise of the week swallows you, take sixty seconds — in the car, at the sink, wherever you are — and say out loud, "God, I know You see me." Let that be true before you do anything else today. Then live like Someone is watching who loves you.
Gospel Light Baptist Church | Walkertown, NC | unsubscribe
