Open the Eyes of My Heart

Last Sunday, I was having quiet time with the Lord. It’s not unusual for me to feel led to grab my guitar or sit down at my keyboard and sing a song to Jesus. This particular morning, I felt led to sing “Give Me Jesus” by Upper Room. As I was singing it, I suddenly started hearing the old song “Open the Eyes of My Heart”. So I began to sing that and tears filled my eyes— just being in awe of Jesus and His heart. I found myself, once again, wanting to give Him everything.

Two days later, I was on YouTube and I noticed the sermon title from a church I love to listen to. It was also from last Sunday. The title was, “Open the Eyes of My Heart”. I love how the Father connects His kids together. I, of course, had to listen to it.

This past week has been tough, yea?

I keep thinking about these two moments in my life. The first one is gonna seem more relevant. I was at a John Mark McMillan concert one night. He started talking about this “dementor” in his pocket. He pulled out his phone. He said (and I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have this recorded), “Ya know… 100 years ago, people only knew of things that happened around them in their community. It would take a while for news to travel with what was happening in the country, much less the world. We aren’t created to carry the weight of the world.” It’s true, we aren’t created to know and see everything. We aren’t created to see people being shot and stabbed. We aren’t created to hear every story, opinion, and perspective, with the expectation of picking a side or someone to follow. And stay with me… I’m not saying these things don’t matter. I’m not saying these people don’t matter. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care or we should instead live in ignorance. Should we grieve, morn, and pray? Absolutely. But to echo last week’s blog, I am saying, the weight of it all…it doesn’t belong to me.

The second moment I’ve had on my mind this week, and again this one is gonna seem less relevant, was a moment when I was at Bethel’s WorshipU conference. (Which I don’t think they even call it that anymore.) It was two weeks in Redding, California. I went by myself and I literally made no friends even though I tried very hard. Ha! (Introvert problems.) Anyway, there was this one night they were having a late night worship night. Some of my favorite worship leaders were going to be there leading. It was starting at like 8pm and supposed to go until midnight. It sounded epic. However, I was exhausted from the week. I really just wanted to stay home (aka my Airbnb), but I had this fear of missing out on something. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The pros to going were definitely outweighing the cons. I needed to just suck it up and go, I thought. The Lord, however, had a question for me.

He said, “Who are going to see?” Suddenly my heart understood the even deeper question. Who was I going to worship?

“You, Lord”, I said, a little hesitantly.

“You can worship Me, right here in your room, Daughter. You don’t have to go to a worship night to experience My Presence. I’m right here.” This moment humbled me. Because if I was being honest with myself, I was going in order experience these worship leaders I loved and looked up to, rather than the God I loved and followed. So I stayed home and laughed, when the Lord followed up with the comment, “And if you stay here, you don’t have to wait and stay up so late.”

We are all looking for someone to follow. I think part of the curse of Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is that we are now all obsessed with trying to figure out right and wrong. We are constantly measuring people up to see if they meet our standard, understanding, and interpretation of rightness. We just want to know who is right and then follow them. Heck, you are even doing it right now with me as you try to figure out where I’m going with all this.

Friend, let me ease your mind… I’m not right. I don’t have the answers and please, don’t take me and things I say, too seriously. I will let you down, I promise. Can I ease your mind even more? You’re not right either. In fact, no one is. No one has all the answers and no one has a perfect perspective and interpretation. We all only see in part. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Jesus, however, is right. He is the only One. The best influencer to follow. And if I could ease your mind even just a little bit more… He doesn’t expect you to have all the answers or to figure them out. He doesn’t expect you to be right. He only wants you to believe and trust that He is. And that it’s His righteousness that clothes us, not our own or anyone else’s.

But because of His grace, we can all encourage each other, we can give testimonies that inspire, we give interpretations that display a piece (a small piece) of His heart, but it should never be about being right. It’s just about Him. It’s not rightness that leads people to repentance. It’s His kindness. (Romans 2) It’s not the way we prove ourselves to the world that will show them the truth of Jesus. It’s by how we love each other as Christ has loved us. It’s that we are One with Him, following His way, knowing that at the end of the day, only He is right and we can trust Him.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” -John 13:34-35

”I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” -John 17:20-21

The sermon I heard from last Sunday was another moment that marked me. Darren Whitehead, from Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee, spoke on Ephesians 1:18-21:

“ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above the rule and authority, power and dominion and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.”

I highly recommend going to listen to this sermon yourself. Click here if you wish to do so. But to recap…

Darren pointed out that “clearly hearts don’t have literal eyes. So Paul maps the physical act of seeing onto the spiritual act of perceiving with the heart.” He said, “The phase, ‘the eyes of your heart’ is a Hebraic idiom. In Jewish thought, the heart, (or the Greek word is ‘kardia’, where we get the word cardiology) was not just emotions, but it was the center of intellect, will, and inner life. So the idea of opening the eyes of my heart means the capacity of the inner person to understand, to discern and to perceive.” “Opening the eyes of your head (information) is natural. Opening the eyes of your heart (revelation) is spiritual.” He explained that there are three things that Paul was praying for the Ephesians eyes to be opened to. In this particular teaching, He talked about two of them.

1. Hope— “that you may know the HOPE to which He has call you”.— What is true, biblical Hope? Darren talked about how “the English word, ‘hope’, is quite unhelpful when we are tying to understand Biblical hope because of how we use it. We tend to use the word hope to express uncertainty, not certainty. Look at those clouds, I hope it doesn’t rain… The Greek word for hope is ‘elpis’ and it means this…confident expectation. It’s confident expectation in who God is and who we are in Christ. When Paul says, ‘you may know the hope to which He’s called you’, it doesn’t mean cross your fingers. It means to ‘Expect great things from God.’- William Carey” He said, “Hebrews 6:19 says this, ‘We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.’ Biblical hope is not a fragile optimism or wishful thinking. It’s an anchor for the soul. As an anchor grips sea beds and holds a ship steady through crashing waves and violent winds, hope in Christ tethers us to the unshakable promises of God. Storms may rage, anxiety may come, opposition may rise, but the anchor holds. This is why hope is not merely surviving a storm, it’s the confidence that no storm can sever us from the One who holds us fast.” “Biblical hope is knowing the outcome of the game.”
2. His Inheritance— “The riches of His glorious inheritance in His Holy people.”— “Now, I don’t know if you caught this or not, but here is one of the most astounding phrases in the New Testament. It doesn’t say, the riches of your glorious inheritance, it says the riches of His glorious inheritance.” What is God’s inheritance? Us. We are His special treasure. His holy people. Matthew 13:44 says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” Darren shared how a professor of his interpreted this parable, “Jesus is the man, we are the treasure in the field. And He gave up everything with great joy to purchase us with His life.” “It is my prayer that the eyes of your heart would be opened to God’s inheritance, which is you. You are His treasure. Some of you get that with the eyes of your head, but you don’t get it the eyes of your heart.” “When you understand this with your heart and not just your head, it changes the way you live. It’s like all along you had this resource that was worth so much to you, and you didn’t even know.”
3. His Power— “And His incomparably great power for us who believe.”— Darren didn’t get to this one in this particular sermon, however, I want to point something out. Paul begins this letter talking about Jesus being raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly realms. Then he adds, “far above the rule and authority, power and dominion and every name that is invoked, not only in this age but in the age to come.” First of all, He just anchored our hope again, by reminding us that the outcome of the game is already determined. Second, Paul comes back to this at the end of his letter in chapter 6.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” (Vs 10-18)

Our struggle isn’t people, our struggle isn’t lack of understanding and perspective. It isn’t natural at all, according to Paul. Our battle is spiritual, therefore we need to see with our spiritual eyes, not our natural ones.

Bringing it all together… Let’s make sure we are truly seeing this reality… we are fighting the true battles against the true enemy in the spiritual realm using God’s armor and His power, as the Sons and Daughters that He inherited with His life, anchored in the certain Hope that in the end, He has already won.

Your encouragement for this week:

You may be feeling the pressure of the “dementor” this week. You may have seen and heard things you were never meant to. You may be feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders and feeling the need to have all the answers. You may be looking for someone to look up to, someone to follow, someone to experience even. Your head may be spinning in the process of trying to figure who and what is really right. I pray this week that the eyes of your heart are opened. That you may morn with those who morn and rejoice with those who rejoice. That you may be inspired by those around you and see the way, the heart and the love of Jesus. That you may feel and be anchored in the true, unwavering, certain hope to which He has called you. That you may experience and know your worth to Him as His special treasure, His inheritance. And finally that you may be filled and live in His great power that raised Jesus Himself from the dead. May you put on God’s armor not your own and may you stand (in the Lord’s strength) against the devil’s schemes, knowing he is the real enemy, but the outcome has already been determined.

🎶 ”Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart. I want to see You. I want to see You. To see You high and lifted up. Shining in the life of your glory. Pour out Your power and love as we sing, Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy, Holy, Holy, I want to see You.”