Are You Looking at Life with Eyeballs Only or with Spiritual Eyes?

Are You Looking at Life with Eyeballs Only or with Spiritual Eyes?

In yesterday’s blog post, I shared about how the extension cord connected to my computer was accidently unplugged during my How to Care Like Christ seminar (http://bit.ly/3YYAR4), causing my computer to go into hibernation. To read that entire post, please visit http://bit.ly/LLrwI.

As I asked yesterday, I’d ask you again today to imagine the scene and to put yourself in my shoes as a speaker.

Your computer is going into hibernation and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Your entire presentation is PowerPoint driven. Most of the audience doesn’t know you. The whole start and set-up for the entire day could be ruined.

What would you do? What would you think? How might you respond?

With Eyeballs Only

My immediate, fleshly, emotional, eyeballs only response was to think and feel, “The day is ruined.” “They will think I’m a hapless presenter.”

With eyeballs only, with a fleshly mindset, I was thinking about me, and not about God and not about them. Hardly a reflection of Matthew 22:35-40!

With Spiritual Eyes

Interestingly, just moments before this event, the seminar host and my spiritual friend, Pastor Mark Tanious, had taken me aside to pray with me. Pastor Mark specifically prayed that God would lead me not to say anything I should not say, and to say anything He wanted me to say, even if it wasn’t in my pre-planned presentation. Mark is a young man mature beyond his years.

So what did I say? How did I react?

Well, read part one for my first response which was a God-led object lesson about how we desperately need to stay plugged into our personal power source—God—because when we live in the power of the flesh we will eventually go into spiritual hibernation mode.

A Second Object Lesson

But God’s Spirit wasn’t done teaching lessons that were not in my lesson plan!

A second major point of the How to Care Like Christ seminar highlights our need in spiritual friendship to help our spiritual friends to look at life with renewed minds—with spiritual eyes, with faith eyes. The only other option is to look at life with eyes of the flesh, with eyeballs only—conformed to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

So later in the morning when we arrived at the point in the seminar where we address spiritual eyes, I confessed to the audience my earlier temptation to look at my hibernating computer with eyeballs only—with a “woe is me,” “I am defeated,” “it’s all about me” fleshly attitude.

Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

And I shared with my audience that through Pastor Mark’s earlier pray, and certainly through their silent prayers during the hibernating moments, that God’s Spirit did a work in my heart. He enlightened my eyes. He opened the eyes of my heart. His Spirit transformed and renewed my thinking in the moment.

The eyes of my heart were enlightened:

*With the reminder that, “It’s not about me; it’s all about Him.”

*With the reminder that, “God is in control and He cares.”

*With the reminder that, “God allows negative events to occur so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.”

*With the reminder that, “I was not there to impress people, but to serve people and to serve God.”

*With the reminder that, “I had a choice—I could look at life with eyeballs only or I could look at life with spiritual eyes.”

*With the reminder that, “It’s not what happens to us that matters most, but how we respond to what happens to us that is the real measure of our walk with God.”

How’s Your Eyesight?

So…how’s your eyesight?

Are you looking at situations in your life today with eyeballs only or with spiritual eyes?

As Elisha prayed for his sight-impaired servant, ask God to open your eyes so you may see, so you may really see reality, God-reality (2 Kings 6:17).

See in This Some Higher Plan

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 33: See in This Some Higher Plan

Without Christ and a Christian perspective, we despair. We doubt. We give up any hope of ever making life work, of ever figuring out the mystery of life, of ever completing the puzzle. We trudge on in doubt, despair, and darkness.

Weaving: Grace Eyes

So what’s weaving? Weaving is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective. It’s seeing life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only. It’s looking at suffering, not with rose colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision.

When Terri returned for her next appointment, I asked her what made the difference in her life, what helped her to turn the corner. She said, “two things, no, two people. Joseph and the Bishop.” Joseph we’ll talk about in a minute. The Bishop we’ll talk about now.

Another Story Must Begin

I had asked Terri to watch Les Mis. There’s a classic scene where the star of the story, Jean val Jean, a paroled prisoner, takes advantage of the Bishop of Digne. Stealing from him, val Jean is captured by the French police. They return him to the Bishop, fully expecting the Bishop to implicate val Jean which would lead to a return to prison without hope for parole.

To the shock of everyone involved, the Bishop says, “But my brother, you forgot these,” and hands him silver candlesticks. The police release val Jean and leave. Then the Bishop says, “by the witness and the martyrs, by the passion and the blood, I have bought your soul for God, now become an honest man, see in this some higher plan.” Val Jean, floored by grace, changed by grace, concludes the scene by singing, “another story must begin.”

Terri, recounting this to me, said, “Now everything that happens to me, I’m looking for God’s higher plan. I’m setting my thoughts on things above—always wondering what God might be up to in this. For me, another story must begin—God’s story that doesn’t obliterate my painful story, but that gives it meaning.”

Weaving in Weaving

Where do we find weaving woven into the fabric of Scripture? That’s our topic for tomorrow.

Despair Is the Negative of Hope

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 32: Despair Is the Negative of Hope

In the healing process, we’ve moved from regrouping to waiting, from deadening to wailing/groaning, and now we move from despairing and doubting to weaving—perceiving life with grace eyes.

Despairing/Doubting Described

To understand doubting, tract the world’s typical grief and acceptance process thus far. Suffering crashes upon us. In shock, we deny its reality. At some point, our emotions can no longer suppress the truth and we explode with anger. Anger doesn’t get us what we want, so we switch tactics and try bargaining, behaving, and good works. No matter what we try, we can’t manage our loss. Depression sets in, alienation strikes.

At some point, the depression lifts a tad. We figure we have to get on with life somehow. We regroup. We re-enter the game, not with a new heart, but with no other choice. The game’s still rough, it still hurts, so we do what we can to deaden and suppress the pain—maybe workaholism, maybe ministryaholism, maybe counselaholism, whatever.

But like the Shunammite woman, life assaults us again, only worse. None of our strategies work. Now what? What do we do? What do we feel? How do we respond? What do we think? We despair. We doubt. We give up any hope of ever making life work and of ever figuring out the mystery of life, of ever completing the puzzle. We trudge on in doubt, despair, and darkness. Despair is the negative of hope.

Now What?

Our eyes darkened by hope, we need grace-eyes. Return tomorrow to learn about the weaving process—weaving in God’s perspective.

Bitter or Better?

Bitter or Better?

The “buzz” of late has focused on one presidential candidate’s statement that during times of hardship, bitterness leads people to turn to God. Whether taken out of context or not, perhaps it will be helpful to reflect on someone in Church history who faced hardship beyond imagination, and instead of turning bitter, turned better—by focusing on God’s-perspective.

Olaudah Equiano, a Christian and an enslaved African American, began his life story with these words, “I acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.” His words might seem trite until we realize that they introduce the narrative of his harrowing kidnapping and enslavement.

Equiano was born free in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin on the coast of Africa. The youngest of seven children, his loving parents gave him the name Olaudah, signifying favored one. Indeed, he lived a favored life in his idyllic upbringing in a simple and quiet village where his father served as the “chief man” who decided disputes, and where his mother adored him dearly.

At age ten, it all came crashing down. “One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest woods: and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.”

Bathed in Tears

His kidnappers then unbound Equiano and his sister. Overpowered by fatigue and grief, they had just one source of relief. “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.”

Equiano and his sister were soon deprived of even the comfort of weeping together. “The next day proved a day of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other’s arms; it was in vain that we besought them not to part us: she was torn from me, and immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described. I cried and grieved continually; and for several days did not eat any thing but what they forced into my mouth.”

It was during these evil circumstances, and many more to come, that Equiano acknowledged his heavenly Father’s good heart and Christ’s merciful providence in every occurrence of his life. He makes the sweeping affirmation that, even in the face of human evil, God is friendly and benevolent, able and willing to turn into good ends whatever may occur. He believed that God squeezes from evil itself a literal blessing.

By Observation We Become Better and Wiser

Equiano ends his narrative with these closing words of counsel. “I early accustomed myself to look at the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion; and in this light every circumstance I have related was to me of importance. After all, what makes any event important, unless by it’s observation we become better and wiser, and learn ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God!’”

Oluadah Equiano moved beyond the suffering. He faced his suffering candidly reminding us that it’s normal to hurt. He suffered face to face with God, recognizing that it’s supernatural to hope. He turned from bitterness because he choose a better perspective—God’s eternal perspective.