God's Mo Better Mother-Vision,

Introduction

Mother’s day is not easy for everyone. Some people don’t feel that Mothers day is for them because they did not give birth to children. Yet they have mentored, advised, nurtured, and cared for many young people. When you do this you are a Mother. And Brothers just because you cannot give birth does not mean that you cannot nurture as a mother. Both genders can mother and father, these are not purely biological functions but they are more nurturing functions then anything else. Men no, you will never be mothers in the sense of birthing a child, but you can mother in the sense of nurturing children to be mo better. You can have a more better vision for a child.

Many of you are not mothers but we were all once children. And as children we liked to be watched. “Hey Momma watch me,” my oldest son would say as he did a backflip or somersault when he was only eight or nine years old. This caused us to put him in gymnastics, but we could see the talent he had for that. He's 46 years old now I don't know if he can still do backflips and somersaults. He would even ask us to watch him when he was doing some crazy stuff. like when he climbed up into the rafters of the theater in which we were rehearsing for a musical stage play, and he called out, “Hey Mama look at me and almost gave Mironda a heart attack. but we all know what it's like to be a kid and want to be seen by our parents especially our mothers.

Many of you ladies who are mothers, and men who are fathers, you sacrifice for your families daily, sometimes you wonder if you are ever seen---because there comes a point when a mother feels that you have become invisible. Nicole Johnson has written a book entitled “The Invisible Woman When Only God Sees.” I know many of you feel like the title of that book. Many of you parents feel like that because you work and you sacrifice but it seems as if it is all unappreciated. But this morning I want to tell you something God sees you and he cares. God sees and notices the work that you put in for your families. You may feel misunderstood like this Mother and child spoken of in chapter 16 of Genesis.

A Misunderstood Mother

In this narrative we meet a woman, a mother, Hagar. She is an immigrant from Egypt who has no sense of belonging. She is a woman without a country. And she is running away from where her body has been used by an infertile couple to produce offspring for them.

The like many women of color has been mistreated and abused. She is trapped in a system where she feels she is invisible. She has no rights, no dignity, no freedom, or choice, and she has had enough. It's real with no night. Abram and Sarai referred to her as "the maid" or "the Egyptian." They didn't see Hagar as a person. She was only there to serve that purposes. She was just "the help." They probably notice that she had actually run away.

Hagar doesn't know what she wants. She knows what she doesn't want—she doesn't want to be treated as a non-person, as an invisible person. She doesn't realize what her greatest need is until she meets the God who meets that need. And she names him in Verse 13, El Roi—"the God who sees."

What name would you give God if you had the chance to name him--- the God who loves,, the guy who guides, the God The God of another chance? The name actually says as much about your need as it would about the character of God because it is through our need that we experience God in our deepest way. God is able to meet all of our needs in a deep fulfilling way because He made us and knows us. God knows what you are going through! He sees your midnight tearo. But God also has a vision of you overcoming those things that have you heartbroken. God Sees You!

Hagar knows this and names God El Roi, THe God who sees me! THe God who understands me, and loves me! Hagar knows that God is Elohim-- "the Creator," Yahweh--- "the Covenant maker," El Shaddai--- "the Almighty." But now Hagar experiences God in an intimate and personal way and she declares, "I have now seen the God who sees me."

Why is that statement so important what difference does it make in our lives to know that there is a God who sees us? As a mother, as a father, as a woman, as a man, as a young person?

God Sees You

When I was a child I soon discovered that I had a secret world that was all my own. I wanted others my Mom and Dad, my Brother to share it, but we all have a place where we go all by ourselves to be in our hearts and minds. Many times we wonder if someone else know we are there. I want you to know this morning God sees you! God understands you! ANd he is watching over you, all night and all day. Thank God I got Angels, messengers of God, watching over me!

I can remember going into the military, and my family came to see me off at the airport. m

What it means to be seen

What is it like to live under the gaze of a loving heavenly Father? There is a beautiful verse in Zephaniah 3:17, which says, "He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love." Do you know that feeling, to be quieted by the love of God, where you just dare to sit and be loved and be seen? Psalm 33:13-15 says, "The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the sons of men; from his dwelling place he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth—he who fashions the hearts of them all, he who understands all their works." He understands and he understands as he looks.

To be seen is to be understood and to be seen is to be encouraged. That verse I read you from Matthew 6:6, it says, "Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." What will he reward us with? He will reward us with his presence and his pleasure. You know that quotation from Chariots of Fire where Eric Liddell, the great runner, said, "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure."

I knew that. I knew that before I even knew God—to run and feel his pleasure. I wonder when you feel his pleasure—when you are running, when you are doing something—I don't know what it is in your life; it's different for everybody. And you think, "Yes, this is who I was created to be!" When something in you knows your Creator and the pleasure of your Creator.

To be seen is to be significant, it's to be safe, it's to be understood, but it's to be free—be free under the gaze of your heavenly Father. I love this incident in 2 Samuel 6 when King David is bringing the ark back to Jerusalem. David, the king, who had many people who looked to him, he only looked to one person. He looked to God and he lived his life before an audience of one. That meant when he brought the ark back to Jerusalem—because he knew how much it thrilled God—he danced for joy. We read in 2 Samuel 6:16:

"As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart."

Jump down to verse 20:

"When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, 'How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!' David said to Michal, 'It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD'S people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.'"

I think that is an amazing passage because David doesn't mind what the crowds think. He doesn't mind what the slave girls think. He doesn't mind what his wife thinks. He doesn't even mind what he thinks about himself in his own eyes. Are you free before the Lord or are you always bothering about what people think and your own view of yourself? I wonder if you've ever got over yourself that you can just experience God's joy. What about to the point of being able to step into things not caring about what people are thinking but knowing this is before the Lord, he sees me.

You see, when God delights in us and we know that, we are free to dance. Free to be goofy. David danced; he danced before the Lord and it was embarrassing to the people around him. But David's dance was expression on earth of God's joy in heaven. The ark is coming back!

God doesn't shut us down; he releases us. To be seen is to be strengthened. 2 Chronicles 16:9: "The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth." Why? So he can bash you on the head? No. " … that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his."

I don't know if the thought of God seeing you makes you kind of cringe or it gives you courage. For Hagar, it gave her courage; she did go back to live in the home of Abraham and Sarah.

Seeing the God who sees us What difference does all this make in our lives? Let me put this as plainly as I can. It makes absolutely no difference unless you look back, unless you actually meet his gaze now in your life. The Bible tells us one day every eye will see him. But what are we waiting for? What more does God have to do than he has done? God has nothing else he can do. "God so loved the world he sent his Son … Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father." How life-changing it is to go into every day knowing I can see the God who sees me. He guards me as the apple of his eye. And remarkably Psalm 32:8 says, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you shall go. I will guide you with my eye." What does that mean? It took me months to understand what that means. It means God will guide us with his eye but he cannot do that unless I look back. If I look back and I look into his eye, I see where he is looking, how he is looking, who he is focused on. The women hidden away in the brothels in Calcutta; Monique Shore looked into the face of God—where is God looking, where is God loving? Oh, it's there! Okay, I am going, and now I see he guides me with his eye. There is so much suffering in the world, but God is doing something and we have been guided by his eye as we look back. It is so easy to miss the people who God is looking at and loving. The disciples went to find food one day while Jesus sat on a well and talked to a Samaritan woman. They must have passed her coming to the well as they went to the town and they missed her. When they got back Jesus said, "Look at the fields. They are ripe unto the harvest." "Open your eyes and look! You have all just been so busy about getting to the market that you just missed somebody. Oh no, you saw here; that's right, but you didn't see her with My eyes; you saw her with yours." They judged her because she is a Samaritan and she is a woman, and so they didn't see her. Open your eyes and look. Jesus sees the person in the crowd who longs to be seen, who longs to be known. He only asks one thing of you and me—"I see you. Look at Me." And God, to enable us to see him, raised him high on a cross. We don't have to climb into a tree like Zaccheus did, hidden, so he could peek down and see Jesus, because he died on a tree. Jesus was raised up high. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." You cannot help but see him on the cross. He was lifted up on the cross so everybody could see just like the children of Israel had to look at a snake lifted on a pole in the desert to be healed. That was the only way. If they didn't because they were too proud or they were too busy or they thought, "How silly; there's got to be another way; I'm not looking at a snake on a pole." "That's the way," God said. "Look and you will live. Don't look and you will die." And that's exactly what happened in the desert. The people who looked, lived. The people who didn't, their bodies were strewn all over the desert. "Look, I am the way, the truth and the life." I think one of my favorite moments in all of Scripture is when Peter, who has watched Jesus being arrested and taken away and all the disciples have run away, comes back and he follows at a distance. There are so many disciples who are following at a distance. Peter thought he couldn't be seen but he still wanted to see Jesus—he just didn't want to stand out and stand up for him. There comes a moment where he has denied him three times to three strangers who said, "Surely you are one of his disciples." You know when you are a disciple of Christ, whether you like it or not, you have the life of Christ in you, even when you think you are hiding in the crowd and even when you are warming your hands on the fire of people who don't know Jesus and don't love him. They can see that you are his disciple. So when Peter is accused of being a disciple, he says, "Man, I don't know what you are talking about!" At that moment Jesus is being taken from one trial to another and he walks past Peter. Luke 22:60: "Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: 'Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.' And he went out and he wept bitterly." What do you imagine that look said to Peter? Do you imagine it said, "I knew you would fail Peter. You let me down. I am done with you Peter." Absolutely not. If you think that's what the look said, then that probably speaks more about you than the One who sees. I believe that the look said, "I knew you would fail, Peter. I love you Peter. And more than that, Peter, I know you still love Me. And I am looking at you and you've looked back at Me and we're still in business." Have you ever wondered, when you have read that account, how we know that Jesus looked at Peter? It's so simple—because Peter looked back; that's how we know. If he hadn't looked back, he wouldn't have seen that Jesus was looking at him. When Peter had failed, disappointed himself, denied Jesus, betrayed Jesus, and momentarily taken his eyes off Jesus, Jesus had never taken his eyes off Peter. There's that old song: "It's too good to be true. Can't take my eyes off of you … " That's what God says. He can't take his eyes off you. He made you, he loves you; he sees you. Conclusion Have you looked back? Have you fixed your eyes on Jesus, the Author and finisher of our faith? Or are your eyes still wandering around the world looking for all the things that glitter so brightly, because it is the eyes that draw us away from looking back. Whether you like it or not and whether you believe it or not and whether you want it or not, God sees you today. He sees you with a look of love. You can see him—not literally of course, but with eyes of faith—with eyes that look into this book and meet him, the living Word and the written Word. God knew we wouldn't be able to see him literally. John 20:29: "Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe." What difference does that make? What difference does that make in our lives that God sees us today as you drive your car away from here, as you go to bed tonight, as you get up tomorrow morning? As you live your life, as you choose your career, as you function as a mom, as you go into a marriage, the day you walk down the aisle and get married; God sees me. The day you die in that hospital bed when nobody knows and nobody understands, God sees me. When you see you believe; when you believe you see. Hagar had longed to be seen and she met the God who sees. I have now seen the God who sees me.