Opening Blind Eyes Series

Opening Blind Eyes

Sept 9, 2007

What does God want you to see?

If you have 20/20 vision, I want to bring you into my world for a minute. This is, more or less, what I see in the morning when I go look in the mirror, and you might say, “That’s doable.

Let me tell you it’s a lot more doable if you don’t know any better but it’s a lot tougher if you understand what the world really looks like.

I got my first set of glasses when I was in sixth grade. I still remember the ride home from Traverse City. It was amazing to be able to see individual leaves on the trees! Before glasses, I had seen only blurry green globs. This didn’t bother me though, because I just figured that fuzzy green trees were what everyone saw when they drove along the roadway.

Living in a world that is blurry has some challenges. Unfortunately, sometimes when we are blind we don’t even know what the challenges are.

So what causes our world to be blurry? It’s not just the misshapen eyeball, a diseased cornea, or a clouded lens. It’s the stuff of life that happens all around us that we see but don’t get. It’s the stuff we just don’t understand.

Here’s what I want to do this weekend. As we look at this story, I am praying that the power of God would reveal the answer to this question. What is it that God wants us to see during those times? When we don’t understand why is this happening? What is He looking at, what does He want us to see?

Let’s look at the story of Jesus when he healed a man who was blind from birth. We’ll find it in John 9.

God wants you to see opportunities

John 9:1, “As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Our story begins with a guy who was born blind, and interestingly, he was born into a culture that blamed him and his sin for his blindness.

One of the reasons that I love this story so much is that I have ridiculously bad eyesight. Anybody else have really bad eyesight? Come on, don’t be ashamed put your hands up there. I can’t them anyway!

The disciples, when they came upon this guy, they didn’t see him – they saw the obstacle. He was blind, but notice, they didn’t say, “Jesus, is there anything that we can do for him? Is there any hope? Jesus, could you heal him?” No, no. All they said was, “Who is to blame?”

You are seeing an obstacle illusion when the obstacle leads you away from people to the place of hopelessness.

There’s nothing else to do but find someone to blame. Jesus saw through the obstacle to the other side where hope lives. Jesus said, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, this happened, So that the work of God might be displayed in His life.

Jesus saw through the obstacle to the person – and the purpose.

RR Tracks going into the distance

An optical illusion is a lot like an optical illusion. Take for example, these railroad tracks. Let’s say we are going to stand right in the middle of these tracks and look at the horizon as far as our eyes can see. What do our eyes tell us these rails are doing? They are telling us they are getting closer together.

Now, would we actually to walk down those railroad tracks, would we found any point at which they actually can converge? Would we? No. Well, if you do, it’s time to get off the train, for sure.

But, no. It’s an optical illusion. What you see doesn’t equal what is real.

And so, maybe you get a doctor’s report and you are reading it, and you think to yourself, “Life, as I know it, is over.” Is it really over? Or, could there be a purpose in it?

Or say you are a church and you are working on a building program in a state where the economy is struggling and the banks are just a little skittish. Do you say, oh no, there’s no hope? Or do you say, Ok, God what do you have in mind. What’s your purpose? See past the obstacle to the purpose. It’s not easy but if you can do that you are beginning to see what God wants you to see.

I’m not saying, in any way, that the obstacles that we face are not real. They are very real. Nor am I saying that the pain that is associated with those struggles in life, that they are not real. It’s all very real; however, the moment you find yourself in a place of hopelessness, of there’s nothing to do but find blame, you’ve got to stop going there and start seeing the danger of this way of living. We’ve all got to see through that hopeless way of living.