Sheryl Brady - Seeing Your Way Through It

I recently began thinking about this message because I had to go for my annual eye exam at the eye doctor. When I went in, the doctor said, «I think you need a new prescription.» He mentioned that although it hadn’t changed a lot, there was a slight adjustment, and he left it up to me if I wanted to get a new pair of glasses. At first, I thought, «Maybe I don’t need them, ” but then I decided that if my vision was changing, I should go ahead and order a new set of glasses.

When they arrived, it took a bit of time to get used to them due to the bifocals and trifocals, but I won’t forget how remarkable it was. I picked them up out of the case, put them on, and immediately saw everything so much clearer. It was shocking to realize that such a small adjustment in my prescription could make my vision look bigger, brighter, and better. I was grateful that I opted for the new lenses, as they made a significant difference in my vision.

Jesus often spoke about vision. Opening the eyes of the blind was one of the biggest and most common miracles He performed in the Bible. Blindness is often used as a metaphor for having a closed mind. People with closed minds aren’t always open to new ideas or ways of thinking, leaving them stuck in darkness. They don’t have to be there, but because they lack vision, that’s where they find themselves.

Matthew 6:22–23 says that your eyes are a window to 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 that if you don’t see things clearly, you may think you’re living in the light, but in reality, you are not. The reason you are not is that you are living in darkness. One result of living in the dark is that you may miss many things that God has planned for your life. The reason you miss out is that you cannot see them.

Many of us have heard the phrase, „What you see is what you get,“ and often that is absolutely true. No one demonstrated this better in scripture than two men named Joshua and Caleb. To provide some history, God used a man named Moses to deliver the children of Israel from slavery. In the book of Numbers, God promised these former slaves that He would bring them into their homeland, known as the Promised Land. The Promised Land represented their future and the inheritance God wanted them to have.

After coming through the wilderness and crossing the Red Sea, they reached the edge of the Promised Land. Moses chose 12 representatives, one from each tribe, and sent them on a fact-finding mission into the Promised Land. He instructed them to find out everything they could about the new land, to see everything they could see, and to experience everything they could experience.