Sheryl Brady - Seeing Your Way Through It

Just for a title, I want you to note what I am going to call this message, which is «Seeing Your Way Through It.» I recently began thinking about this message because it came time for my annual eye exam at the eye doctor. When I went in, of course, he said, «I think you need a new prescription.» He indicated that it really didn’t change a lot—he said it might have gotten a bit better or worse—but he also said it’s a slight change and left it up to me if I wanted to just get a new pair of glasses. At first, I thought maybe I didn’t need them, but then I decided if there was a change, I wanted to go ahead and get a new pair. So, I ordered my glasses, and when they arrived, it took a little time, but when I finally got them, I won’t forget the moment. I picked them up out of the case, put them on my eyes, and I could immediately see everything much clearer. The clarity and size were a little shocking, and I couldn’t believe that such a small adjustment in my prescription could make my vision look so much bigger, brighter, bolder, and better. I was grateful I decided to get the new lenses because it made a huge difference in my eyesight.

Jesus always had much to say about vision. Opening the eyes of the blind was one of His biggest miracles and one of the most common ones Jesus performed in the Bible. When they talk about blindness, it often serves as a metaphor for having a closed mind. People with closed minds are not always open to new ideas or new ways of thinking, which causes them to be stuck in darkness. They didn’t have to be there, but because of their lack of vision, that’s where they are. They are stuck in darkness. Matthew 6:22–23 says that your eyes are a window for your soul. When they are good, you have all the light you need; but when your eyes are bad, everything is dark. If the light inside you is dark, you are surely in the dark. Jesus is saying to us there that if you don’t really see things clearly, correctly, or truthfully, you may think that you are living in the light and that your vision is good, but in reality, it is not. The reason it is not is that you are living in darkness. One result of living in darkness is that you miss out on many of the things God has planned for your life, and the reason you miss out is that you cannot see them.

In many cases, we’ve all heard the phrase, «What you see is what you get,» and that is absolutely true. Nobody understood this better in Scripture than two men named Joshua and Caleb. To give you a little bit of history in their backstory, God used a man named Moses to bring the children of Israel, God’s people, up out of slavery. In the book of Numbers, God promises these people, who were slaves, that He will bring them into a homeland of their own, which is called the Promised Land. The Promised Land represented their future and the inheritance that God wanted them to have. After coming through the wilderness and crossing over the Red Sea, they reached the edge of the Promised Land. Once they got there, Moses chose 12 representatives from among the people—one representative from each of the 12 tribes—and sent them on a fact-finding mission into the Promised Land. He wanted them to report back on what it was like on the other side. Moses said to them, «Go into the new land as representatives, and find out everything you can. See everything you can see, and experience everything you can experience.»