Our Eyes. Part One

This week, I am re-posting a series I did in early 2022, Our Eyes. It feels important as the message remains urgent. This series was a follow-up to one of the impressions I had for 2022, “911! What Are We Watching?” (To read Impressions for 2022, click the title.)

Our Eyes, Part One

I had been praying one morning at my church. Afterward, I was washing my hands in the restroom when the alarm on my watch sounded. This caught my attention for two reasons. First, I didn’t set the alarm on my watch. It’s an old-school digital watch, and I have no clue how to program it even if I wanted to. Secondly, the time the alarm went off was 9:11am. I felt the Lord speak in the moment, “911! There is an urgent need to cleanse the things you (Church) are watching.”

From the moment we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night (excluding the midday nap, shout out to the power nappers!), our eyes are open and working. An influx of information and content enters our bodies through the eyes.

Our eyes are a crucial part of who we are. We should guard and protect them by filtering the content that comes through them. Our eyes can’t be a neglected, assumed area in our lives.

Listen to what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. The Eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. Matthew 6:21-22

That’s powerful by itself, but when we consider the verses that come before and follow, we get a greater understanding.

• Vs 19-20, Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also…
• Vs 21-23, The eye is the lamp for the whole body. If the eye is healthy the whole body is healthy…
• Vs 24, No one can serve two masters… 

Jesus emphasized the importance of picking our treasures wisely. He highlights the role our eyes play in that process. Our whole bodies — heart, soul, mind, and strength — are affected by what comes through our eyes. 

This is the emergency at hand. What we let into our whole bodies determines our treasure. If we have multiple treasures, our devotion to God and to the kingdom of heaven is in jeopardy.

The process looks something like this. As our eyes intake information, it stirs up emotions that affect our thought process, which affects our decision-making, which affects our actions. We need discernment in those areas. The chasm between the kingdom of heaven and the world is only growing farther apart. We can try to live in the in-between, in the best of both worlds, the grey, but the island we are trying to create between the two kingdoms is an apparition. There is no substance to such an existence. Again, that’s the emergency.

Will you take a minute and ask the Holy Spirit to survey the content that comes through your eyes on a daily basis? Is it healthy? Is it benefiting your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Are there any fixations or obsessions that need to be filtered out? We give you our eyes, Jesus. They were made for beholding you.