Dirty Lenses

If asked, most people consider themselves fans of sight. We live in a visual world—driving, shopping, working, browsing the web— all greatly dependent on our ability to see. Advertisements aim to appease our sight before anything else, for our eyes are a primary window through which we experience this world.
Many of us are guilty of taking advantage of our sight. Like breathing and blinking, it’s not something we think of often. In fact, only when our vision is distorted or impaired to we become painfully aware of our dependency on two very small parts of our body.
Like our physical sight, most people remain grossly oblivious to their spiritual sight. We find ourselves bogged down with the physical aspects of life we see, to the detriment of our spiritual health. When this happens, our spiritual gauges aren’t tuned and we fade into cycles of meaninglessness without passion or direction.
Without realizing it, the cycles of meaninglessness translate into beings without meaning, purpose, or course. We stop living and settle for existing. Our existence dims into repetitive cycles of monotony, and we surrender the eternal glory we’re created for.
What we need is perspective—to keep the lenses of our hearts and minds immersed in the Gospel, cleaned and seeing straight. Only the Gospel awards true perspective. It alone is centered on God, His purposes, and His plan of redemption through which we find security, meaning, and purpose.
Perspective without the Gospel equates to a sun without warmth. It doesn’t make sense and it can’t happen.
The tension we combat on a daily basis is our sad attempt to make the incoherent a reality.  We try to find security, meaning and purpose from the world’s perspective, which is diametrically opposed to God’s. This renders us frustrated, stressed and strained without any hope of getting better.
Disciples of Christ cannot afford living through lenses of this world. The Gospel alone must be the lens through which we view life, love, and eternity. Segregating our lives into chambers where God only gets one of two is a recipe for utter catastrophe. When we accept Christ, He becomes the chamber in which all of life is placed!
The Gospel is not an addition to our lives, it’s a transplant—an absolute replacement of systems and modes of operation. Once we’re saved we cannot function according to the ways of the world anymore. That’s like trying to fit a circle in a square hole. It doesn’t work; yet we spend so much of our lives trying.
God’s truth isn’t just a lens we’re encouraged to look through from time to time. Weekend services and mid-week small groups aren’t specified times to put our Gospel-glasses on, only to take them off when we exit the door.
We’re not occasional participants in God’s Gospel initiative; we’re slaves to it! In Christ, our lives become all about His truth and purposes, which cannot be separated from the Gospel! No longer do we pursue what we once did. We become who we now are in Jesus.
This only happens when we submerge ourselves in His Gospel every day—when we beg for Him to make His truth the lens through which we see, experience, and thrive. It’s easier to act on when we realize we’re not capable of truly living otherwise!
God alone brings spiritual sight to our physical eyes.
He doesn’t just clean the lens of our old ways of thinking; He replaces them with new ones through which we can genuinely flourish! All we need to do is let go and let Him! Let Him replace the dingy lenses of this world with the lens of His Gospel. Our black and white one dimensional vision will transform into eternal 3-D in radiant color! Let Jesus be your all-consuming, perfect, holy and glorious lens for all your sight!