Daily Devotion

Looking Through Dirty Lenses

"Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness." Luke 11:34

I just spent that last few minutes looking at some pictures from the last few years...actually almost 4 years ago. My first instinct was to cry (which I did) and ask God why did He allow me to experience the pains associated with the face that stared back at me from the picture. Why did He allow the prednisone and other medicines to ravage my body and pull out the inner ugliness caused by the deterioration of my kidney function; I still barely understand why I had to experience that. Then it dawned on me that instead of focusing on the pain, hurt, frustration and anger that I remembered from that point in my life, I should instead thank God for deliverance from that place. At first I only saw the pain--the hatred I felt towards myself and how I looked, the pain I felt walking back and forth to class, the inability to truly look at myself in a mirror. Then I realized that God used it to make me stronger, the very same situation that the enemy intended for my defeat.


The scripture above tells us what its like to have bad eyes. Its the same when you look through dirty glasses or sunglasses. Everything you see will be distorted, cloudy, or warped. Like eyes inclined to darkness, dirty lenses warp our view of reality with whatever imperfections within the lens. My eyes during that time in my life were warped by the reality of my declining health, being in school, and the one thing I felt I had control of--myself--being turned against me. Rather than looking at the fact that I was alive in spite of the hurt and pain, the fact that God kept me alive for some reason beyond my own understanding, I cried daily at my own hatred of my outer appearance, the confused stares and questions, and the uncertainty things would ever be the same. My situation is much like those of us whose eyes have been conditioned to see the way of the world as correct and that it is impossible to live life in obedience to the Lord or in the way of the Word. Their eyes have been darkened and until they turn back to the Lord, they cannot see properly. Until God reminded me of my deliverance (because I don't even look anything like those pictures of me), I looked through dirty lenses or bad eyes. God had to take me from my physical self into the supernatural to see the blessings He has given me.

Are you looking through dirty lenses, lenses warped by pain, sin, and lies? Until you ask God to clean them and reveal the truth to you, you will always find fault with whatever you are looking at.

"Therefore, be careful that the light in you isn't darkness." Luke 11:35

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"No weapon formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of God and their righteousness is of me," says the Lord. Isaiah 54:17