Oftentimes you are not able to recognize those whom God has sent into your life to make a difference and to give you spiritual insight into your purpose. This blindness can inhibit your understanding of the full purpose of God. However, God is a master communicator and the Lord will cause you to understand, no matter what it takes.

Frequently you listen to, but do not internalize, the messages and words spoken by ordinary people used by God because: 1) They look like you, and so you might not value them because of your own lack of personal value; 2) They are from your community, and so you think you already know them; 3) They share the same background, which makes you feel they are not qualified to know any more than you do; 4) They are so close to you as a friend or relative, and your closeness hinders you from hearing God in their words. Not everyone can see God in anyone.

When God determines to deliver you, God will often use someone who looks like you. God sent Moses to his own people. God sent Esther to help her own people. God sent Martin Luther King to his own people. God is not prejudiced nor a respecter of persons. God knows, however, that a familiar face and voice should help to give you a sense of honor and dignity. It is wonderful, but, all too often, you cannot recognize your dreamer.

Peter did not recognize his dreamer — Jesus — who would have walked by the disciples on the water while they were in a ship in the middle of a storm. Peter said to Jesus: “if that is You, bid me come.” Peter walked on the water with Jesus. The two Emmaeus travelers walking home from Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of the Lord did not recognize Jesus, who rebuked them and then taught them with authority out of the scriptures. Not until He was at the table in their house breaking bread did they recognize Him, at which time He vanished.

Coming face to face with their dreamer, Joseph’s brothers still did not recognize him. They were speechless! Because of how they had treated their younger brother in the past, their unconfessed sins came to mind and tried to choke the moment of sweet family reunion. But Joseph, too, had learned some hard lessons. His confession of brotherhood and divine purpose helped to ease the burden of their guilt and recognize that the dreamer in the family was still alive and willing to help them.

While God sends people every day to declare his truth and implement his purpose in the earth, the reality is that they are often not recognized by the ones they are sent to.

While all of the ones I’ve mentioned were sent to their own, the reality is that sometimes “their own” did not receive or recognize them. Such was the case with Moses and Martin. Esther had enemies, but not of her own people. Yet each of them submitted to the will of the Lord to accomplish the purpose for which they were created. That purpose was to help those to whom they were sent.

History is replete with God-sent dreamers. Some are received while others are killed, martyred, marginalized and ostracized. Those to whom they were sent just didn’t recognize them. Well, if you are a dreamer and those whom God has sent you to help don’t recognize who you are, then you’re in good company.

For you see, God sent his only Son, Jesus the Christ, to his own people, too. They didn’t recognize him in a manger nor did they recognize him on a cross. “They didn’t receive him,” says the apostle John. “But for those that did,” he goes on to say, “he gave them power to become the children of God.”

As time goes on, my prayer, and hopefully you will join me, is that you will become able to recognize those dreamers and messengers that God sends your way.

Written by Dr. William CAMPBELL JR. – senior pastor of Anderson Chapel AME Church