Hi friends. My name is Matt King. I am with King Ministries. Welcome to God Today. I want to talk to you today about seeing them, valuing them, and winning them. If we see people how God sees them, we will value them how He values them, and we will win them for Jesus. I have really come alive and have really been ignited in my heart to Matthew 13, where Jesus talks about the pearl of great price. I have really been delving into this passage of Scripture, getting excited about it, just feeling it hit me over and over again.
Jesus describes you and me, humanity, men, women, and children as pearls of great price. He actually is the merchant in that parable that sold everything to buy the pearls of great price. Jesus is the merchant and people are the pearls of great price. I have recently been feeling that if we can see people as Jesus sees them, we will value them how He values them, then we will win them for Him.
I have been doing my absolute best to gain the heart of God to be in prayer, in intimacy with Jesus, to see people how He sees them. To not have the lens of the world or my upbringing, or my socioeconomic status. You know, my sociocultural lens on to see people, no. I don’t want that. I want Jesus’s lens when I see people. I want the lens that Jesus saw through when I see people.
Recently, I was in my current home city Bergen, Norway. I was drawn to speak to a man that I could see was from the Middle East. I approached this man and just began to talk to him and began to share the love of Jesus with him. He actually shared with me that he is originally from Gaza. He is a Palestinian. We had this amazing conversation about Jesus, Mohammed, the Bible, and Quran. He is Muslim. We began to talk and we had this incredible conversation that he was really being moved by. He really then proceeded to invite me into his store. This grocery store. We go down the stairs, into this dark grocery store with all these Middle Eastern foods and Middle Eastern – Arabic languages – on the walls and food products. I am down in this underground grocery store, feeling a little bit uncomfortable, to be honest. He proceeded to bring his friends, his family in to talk to me. Then he proceeds to bring in a leader of the Mosque that he attends. I end up in there, at night, in this underground grocery store for an hour and a half sharing about Jesus.
To be honest with you, at the beginning of that time I actually felt quite uncomfortable – can I be completely honest? I felt quite uncomfortable. As time began to go on, I began to feel more and more settled. I began to feel the pleasure of God over what was happening. This man and these people are so precious to Him. They are so dear to Him. Can I tell you, I spent about an hour and a half in that underground store, talking with my new Palestinian friends, talking with people from Somalia, talking with a leader in the local Mosque. They wanted to exchange contact information with me and have me stay in touch with them. They have since followed me up to have further coffees and lunches together, and get together more and more. Honestly, friend, I was astonished.
What is happening, I believe, is that I am taking the lenses of the world off. I am seeing them how Jesus is seeing them, His love for them. I am feeling His love for them. I am feeling the fact that He sees them as pearls of great price. As that is happening, the love of God is coming out from within me and touching their lives. They’re pearls of great price. They may be Muslim, they may be from various nations of tribes and tongues. They are precious to Jesus Christ. They are pearls of great price.
I want to tell you that I believe if we can begin to change the way we see people, the people of the Middle Eastern countries that we sometimes understand, people of other faiths, the Muslims, the Buddhists if we can change the way we see them. See them not as our enemy, but as people Jesus Christ died for, if we can change the way we see them, I believe we will then value them the way that Jesus values them, we will see them as pearls of great price, the way Jesus values them. That will position us with the power of the Holy Spirit to win them for Jesus. May we win for the Lamb that was slain, the ones that He died for. May we win the reward for Jesus, the Lamb that was slain, that died before the foundation of the world was laid. May we win for Him, the pearls for a great price. Father, I bless everyone watching today. I pray, Father, that we would all see people how you see them. I pray we value them how you value them. I pray we would win more and more for Jesus. I pray you would make us effective in the great commission. We need you, Jesus, we need your grace. Help me, help my friends watching today. Help us all. We love you, Jesus. I bless everyone today that is watching. In Jesus’s name. Amen.