Tag Archives: eyes

Is your light malfunctioning? (Luke 11:33-36) November 8, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – 2 Chronicles 33-36

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 11:33-36
Jesus: You need a light to see. Only an idiot would light a lamp and then put it beneath the floor or under a bucket. No, any intelligent person would put the lamp on a table so everyone who comes in the house can see. Listen, your eye, your outlook, the way you see is your lamp. If your way of seeing is functioning well, then your whole life will be enlightened. But if your way of seeing is darkened, then your life will be a dark, dark place. So be careful, people, because your light may be malfunctioning. If your outlook is good, then your whole life will be bright, with no shadowy corners, as when a radiant lamp brightens your home.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Solomon talks about the plight of the elderly in Ecclesiastes 12 this way: And so we come to the end of this musing over life. My advice to you is to remember your Creator, God, while you are young: before life gets hard and the injustice of old age comes upon you—before the years arrive when pleasure feels far out of reach— before the sun and light and the moon and stars fade to darkness and before cloud-covered skies return after the rain. Remember Him before the arms and legs of the keeper of the house begin to tremble—before the strong grow uneasy and bent over with age—before toothless gums aren’t able to chew food and eyes grow dim. Remember Him before the doors are shut in the streets and hearing fails and everyday sounds fade away—before the slightest sound of a bird’s chirp awakens the sleeping but the song itself has fallen silent.

But today ophthalmologists and audiologists are doing some things to turn back the years in some ways. In a couple of days I get my new hearing aids and I hope to be able to hear those doors on the streets open again and hear the sounds of laughter again and the bird’s chirp like I haven’t heard them in years. The noises in the Army have a tendency to decrease hearing in some frequencies sometimes and age doesn’t help the problem any. So I’m looking forward to seeing what audiology and modern science can do.

Ophthalmologists can now replace those cloudy lens that sit behind the iris. The disease we call it is cataracts that cause those lens to just get more and more milky until you just can’t see through the lens anymore. But now, we can replace those lens. When the patient leaves the doctor’s office, not only is the lens replaced, but now vision is corrected at the same time by shaping the cornea and suddenly the cloudy vision is not just unclouded, but crystal clear.

It’s as if a miracle happens. Those who go through that cataract surgery and have their vision restored understand something of what Jesus talks about when He talks about the way we see. Many go about their daily chores almost blind until that day the surgeon releases them from their bondage and lets the light pour into their lives so they can see again. They can once again experience the world the way God made it, bright and clear and full of light instead of dim and dull and dark because of the lens that has distorted their view.

It’s a shame we can’t figure out spiritual maladies the way we do physical maladies. Satan has clouded our vision so we walk through this world with cataracts if we let him. But Jesus wants to be that ophthalmologist that performs the needed surgery on our eyes so we can see clearly once more. He wants to remove those diseased lens so we can see the way God meant the world to be, not the way we have perverted it through our sinful ways. He can correct our vision so we can see the way we should, we can see through His eyes of love and recognize those who need the same vision correction He gives us. Then we can introduce them to the physician who can help their spiritual vision, too.

Walking around blindly today is dangerous. There are too many pitfalls and dangers to just strike out without sight. Even the physically blind today go through months of training or use support animals to help them through the perpetual night. But the spiritually blind, talk about dangerous. Our eternal destiny is at stake. Satan tries to make us believe that God is too kind to let any of us go to hell. He’s going to save us all, Satan tells us. God is love, after all, right?

But it’s one of Satan’s lies. You see, God doesn’t send us to hell. We send ourselves there. God is love. He made a way of escape for us, but we must take it. The means of salvation is there, but it is still our choice. Ted Bundy’s mother loved him, but it didn’t keep him from choosing to become a serial killer. We make our own choices. I choose to spend eternity with God or with Satan. It is my choice. I choose to let Jesus open my eyes to His light and follow Him. How about you? 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Put filters on your windows (Matthew 6:22-23) January 24, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

Subscribe in: iTunes|Download

Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Romans 7-8

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:22-23
Jesus: The eye is the lamp of the body. You draw light into your body through your eyes, and light shines out to the world through your eyes. So if your eye is well and shows you what is true, then your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is clouded or evil, then your body will be filled with evil and dark clouds. And the darkness that takes over the body of a child of God who has gone astray—that is the deepest, darkest darkness there is.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Educators spend lots of time and research figuring out what how people learn. They talk about kinetic learners, auditory learners, visual learners, and so forth, but the truth is we are all more visual learners than we think. Jesus understood that when He said, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” Unless you have some visual impairment, more than 75% of your learning comes as a result of what you see, researchers tell us. Even for the most gifted auditory and kinetic learners.

It’s easy to understand the truth of this reasoning when you think about it. We live in a visual world. Our brain takes in everything around us through our vision. It’s true we have five physical senses, but the one we use the most is by far linked to what we see. The window of our eyes brings more information into our brain than all the other senses combined. The millions of rods and cones on the back of our eyeball gathers signals light signals from the time we wake until the time we fall asleep and pour that information into the most miraculous computer every conceived, our brain.

Our eyes take in everything around us without us even thinking about it. We see things we don’t even notice, but they somehow find their way into our brain. Advertisers learned about subliminal messages that can be buried into pictures and flashed into screens so quickly they don’t register in our conscious mind, but over time twist our subconscious to make us bend toward a certain product or elicit a particular mood. All because we see something for a split second.

So these two windows we have that impact us so heavily, these two eyes that sit in the front of our face, how do we protect what goes into them to shield the mind from short-circuiting and self-destructing from evil? Jeremiah says our thoughts are continually evil, but can we get away from that by stopping the evil input and training our minds with good? How do we do that in today’s culture?

I think about what changes we allow in our culture and the degradation that evil brings as we let our eyes continue to remain open to anything and everything. Just look at the change in television since it began in the 1950’s. As a kid, I remember watching “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and “Gunsmoke.” “Gunsmoke” was the violent show of the time. That was the television show that had some killing and gore. No show depicted sleeping around or pre-marital sexual experimentation. Drugs weren’t a topic in any scene. Cigarette smoking was the big vice. Beaver learned lying was bad because every time he did, bad things happened. Main characters were good to others and helped their neighbors.

Today, it’s hard to find any program, any program without a gay couple in it. Lying, cheating, getting the best of others to gain the upper hand and come out on top for yourself, these are the themes today. Reality shows. Come on, there’s nothing real about the reality shows. It’s television, scripted, edited, made to entertain and make money for the producers and sponsors. The boob tube now has so few wholesome shows on it, it would probably do us all good to not just turn them off, but throw them out and save the space and electricity they consume in our home.

The same is true with most of our movies, books, magazines. The culture today floods us with things that will try to turn us away from what is good. And I really get concerned about Jesus’ last words in this part of His discourse. Listen again. He said, “And the darkness that takes over the body of a child of God who has gone astray—that is the deepest, darkest darkness there is.”

I know what darkness is. I dropped my light spelunking once in a cave in Tennessee and it went out when if fell. It took me about five minutes to find it in the dark. It seemed like five hours. The dark in a cave deep under the earth makes you appreciate light. I could not see. Period. The black nothingness closed around me like a glove, even though I knew the walls of the cavern were forty feet away. My breath quicken and started to come in short gasps as I felt around me on the dark cavern floor. I longed for even the tiniest bit of light, but there was none. I think about that day when I read this verse. As a child of God, I do not want to go astray.

How do we stay on track? Watch what comes into the windows of your body, your mind, your soul. Filter the things you can filter. I know the culture will expose you to things you cannot help but see. Billboards are everywhere and we cannot avoid them. Magazine covers hit you in the face at checkout lines. But we do not have to keep our eyes glued to those things. We don’t have to dwell on what the world puts in front of us. We have the power to avert our gaze. We can, with God’s help, filter the things that we focus on. We can do what Paul admonishes us to do. “Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy.”

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.