Heart Tracks - Vision Check

This is what the Lord says: 'Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool." Isaiah 66:1...."Simple people - those who have little spiritual depth and do not care much about living for God and eternity - will act on whims. They will go with the flow of any current that seems appealing, and they end up tossed around on the waves of passing styles, questionable doctrine, selfish interests, and empty ideologies. They are easily deceived. As the proverb says, they believe anything." Chris Tiegreen

I was part of a prayer group last week in which the sharing focused on how those who are His have been given the opportunity to see all things from His Kingdom perspective, but in too many ways, we have settled for seeing everything from an earthly one. That means that instead of seeing with His perception, wisdom, discernment and understanding, we see with our own. We rely on our physical and emotional senses. As the Word says, "We lean upon our own understanding." Paul wrote of our "having the mind of Christ," which means we process all things as He did, from the perspective of heaven. The great challenge for the disciples was to see and understand what Jesus saw and understood. That struggle went on until Pentecost, when the "eyes of their hearts" were opened. They no longer were ruled by appearances and what seemed to be, but by His Truth. A Truth that they didn't just hold in their minds and hearts, but that was free to transform their sight and understanding. What they saw was no longer governed by the footstool that is the earth, but by the Throne room of the Father. Has such really happened to you and me? Do we walk with footstool or throne room vision?

We're so prone to rely upon our emotions, feelings, and immediate appearances. We rarely "see through" things with His sight. We have no real understanding of what He may be doing and saying through what is unfolding before us. He is moving, speaking in all of it, but since we can't really see, neither can we really hear. And so, we don't understand. We miss what He doing, and so we act, or rather react, to outward stimuli....and most often, wrongly. We see this on all levels of life; career moves, ministry undertakings, and the most damaging of all, relationship choices. All of them are far more fueled and led by our senses, emotions, feelings, and understanding than they ever are by His. The landscape of the Church is strewn with the wreckage of those choices. Some years back, when I was serving on staff at a New Jersey church, a lovely lady, newly divorced, entered into a relationship with the brother of her best friend. A number of ladies in the fellowship thought this was wonderful. She needed someone they said. Some, myself among them, tried to caution her against it, but she went forward, and only months after the divorce became final, married him. They divorced a few years later. Tragic for all. Tragic that others in the fellowship, considered mature by most, foolishly encouraged her in the move. Emotions. Feelings. Human reasoning were in the forefront. Disaster came behind them. Yet we seem to so readily enter into these disasters....again, and again, and again. We see "wonderful possibilities," and are blind to His true picture in them. I know. I've entered into those disasters and been among the wreckage.

It's likely you know the story of Israel sending 12 spies into the land that God had promised them. God wanted them to see the wonder and beauty of what He had given them. All 12 saw it, but its reality only registered on the hearts and minds of two of them, Joshua and Caleb. The rest saw, but didn't see, because what impacted them were all the "difficulties" that went with securing the land. Only Joshua and Caleb saw everything with His eyes and understanding. The other 10 saw with theirs.....and they told everyone else what they "saw" as well. The cost to the people was great. Forty years of wandering. It always is when we can only see with our own understanding. And we do this not only concerning perceived difficulties, but with what we see as "great opportunities."

There are so many things to be grieved about as concerns the life of the Church. The watering down of His Word. The rampant compromise as concerns holy living. The "shadow lives" being lived out by so many who profess to be His, yet embrace so many practices, thoughts, and attitudes of the world. Yet, none may surpass our loss of walking and living in His understanding, in His discernment, and with His wisdom. To live not by the eyes of flesh, but of the Holy Spirit. To not live earthbound lives, but ones that are "seated with Him." Seated with Him, with Christ, in the heavens. If we truly did, those things I mentioned first would no longer grieve us, and certainly not grieve Him......Sound too mystical for you? If it does, could you dare to have a vision check, and learn if you're living with footstool vision? And missing all the sights and wonders that can only be seen from the Throne room of the Father.

Blessings,
Pastor O