I wear glasses. My glasses have Progressive Lenses. (Progressive Lens - They are characterized by a gradient or increasing lens power, added to the wearer's correction for the other refractive errors.) I have a near sighted vision problem, plus I am 61 years old and my up close vision is fairly weak, so I have progressive lenses. When I take off my glasses I can still see pretty clear at a distance, but up close is a no go. I can take a pair of reading glasses and see very clearly for reading up close material, and even thread a needle. Yay!! If I want to have selective vision I can just stay away from glasses at all and I will go through my life seeing blurry and unfocused and miss many things I should be seeing. There is a scenario where I can choose to see things in the distance fairly good and not see things right in front of me at all. I could just get a pair of glasses that helped my far away vision be clear, but not my up close vision. As long as I only wanted to see things at a distance that would be the ideal situation for those glasses. My up close vision would be compromised though and I would have to live with the realization that anything close would not be seen. In 1 Samuel 16:7b scripture says, "For man looks a the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." This scripture is centered around the time when Samuel was coming to anoint the next king of Israel and God chose David. You can't get any closer than the heart when looking at a person and God knew David's heart was a heart that wanted the "heart of God." In other words, David wanted to line up with God's heart when living his life and that kind of man could lead God's people in the best way possible. This all begs the question, "Where is your heart?"
If you are trying to see where your heart really is keep in mind, God is already there in the Holy Spirit! So, if you want to really SEE clearly where your heart is you need to seek God's counsel on that matter and He will show you where your heart really is. There is a barrier we can put into place when thinking about this whole heart thing though. We can try to keep God at a distance and feel good about it because our distance vision seems to be acceptable and looking at our life from a distance shows I am kind of ok. Kind of? Are we going to settle for that kind of spiritual condition with the Lord living in our heart? I hope not!!
Every once in a while, we will have a time with God in a church service, a quiet time, or a tough circumstance in life where we put on the reading glasses and let Him magnify the true identity of our heart for us to see. The effect is life-changing when we truly see ourselves up close and personal and see the deficiencies of our heart. Mostly we don't like that and that is why we keep those glasses on the shelf. Many times when that happens we may make a true heart commitment, we think. But really when we take off those reading glasses we go back to looking at our heart from a distance and that seems to suffice to make it through a day. So, what is the answer? We all need to wear progressive lenses!! Lenses that adjust to the needs of our vision, whether far or close, will be the necessary cure for keeping our vision and commitment to the Lord current and growing.
I hope all of this eyeglass speculation hasn't been too cryptic to understand the meaning of it all.
Please note: When we accept Jesus, He comes in to our heart and changes our life. That change gives us good "close up" vision to see things in our life that need to be changed to be more like Jesus. When our close up vision improves, our distance vision improves and the things of the future come more alive because it is all centered around the plans God has for our life. The enemy wants to put a cramp in these plans by having us not allow God to help us see our heart and the needs of that heart to grow in the Lord, so he becomes the accuser the Bible speaks about and he talks us into looking at everything else in the distance so we don't look at the needs of our heart "up close." Progressive lens faith is the faith that is constantly growing in the Lord because he shows us up close our needs for change and then we are able to see the world at a distance with a whole new light. These Jesus' lenses really work well because they constantly work through daily quiet times, meaningful times of worship with other believers, in depth study of God's Word, and rubbing shoulders and comparing notes with others wearing the same type of glasses. The end result is freshfully clean Christians, who serve Jesus in a very current, clear way.....Progressively!!
I read a devotion this morning that brought in the scripture in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 where it says, "17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
This scripture pretty much sums up what I am saying. If we will just allow God to show us who we are and who He is, He will constantly improve our vision of who we should be and how that all fits together. By the way, we will take on a new "look" that will appear much more like Jesus in everything we say and do. That alone should lead us to focus intently on the Word of God. In Mark 8:22-25 Jesus meets a blind man at the pool of Bethsaida. He takes the man outside of town and spits in the man's eyes and put his hand on him. Jesus asked him "Do you see anything?" The man looked up and said "I see people; they look like trees walking around." Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes again and then his eyes were opened, his vision was restored, and he could see everything clearly. It's time to ask Jesus to heal the blindness in our eyes to help us just not see people walking around like nothings, but to give us vision to see "everything" clearly. Those things up close and those things at a distance. I hope this makes sense to you. It makes perfect sense to me, but then again, "I've got on my progressive lenses."
The Pilgrimage continues....
David Warren
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