On my recent trip back from the United Kingdom, I pick up the latest copy of National Geographic on the plane and on the cover was this title “The End of Blindness”. I got excited right there. The article had to do with the current global battle to end blindness on this planet. The stats are pretty staggering. Take a look at this – Roughly 1 in 200 people are blind. That’s about 39 million people in the world who cannot see, who live in total darkness. Another 246 million have very poor vision that severely limits their movements. About 90% of the world’s visually-impaired live in low-income settings. But here’s the good news – 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured.
So these numbers alone would justify our battle against blindness. The article goes on to say that neuroscientists love the eye because it’s the only place from which you can see the brain without drilling a hole. That’s trivia which I thought you might like. It’s also interesting that just by looking into the eye, doctors can tell what’s wrong with it and whether a treatment is working. Jesus actually said the same thing. How much light in your body or soul depends on how clear your eye is!
I say all this because blindness in the Church has to end. We must fight against blindness in whatever shape, size or form. Ignorance is not bliss. The Lord warned that His people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. The apostles in the early Church had a running battle with ignorance and blindness and so much we. If we’re ever going to be a prophetic people, then we’ve to be anchored in the unseen. The wall that separates the seen from the unseen is a thin wall, but we need a breakthrough to see into His world, the unseen realm.
One of the biggest myths in the Church today is the thought that the ability to see into the spiritual realm is reserved only for a select few. That only the seers and the prophets can really see. That they’re the eyes of the Church and the rest of us are somehow consigned to blindness. The result of this myth is that the Church has fallen into such a state of blindness because we’ve not trained our eyes to see and this has resulted in the Church losing its prophetic edge and having a lazy eye. I want to suggest to you that God’s desire is for the whole Church to see.
Say you’re a parent and you’ve four kids. Did you pray that 1 out of 4 would be blind? “O God, we thank You for our children. But if only three can see and one is blind, that’s okay for us.” Isn’t that just ridiculous? If you as a parent want all your children to have perfect eyesight, how much more the Heavenly Father? Chew on that for a few moments.
In the great passage on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Joel 2:28-29, look at what happens when God pours out His Spirit. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old man shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. Even upon your menservants, maidservants, I will pour My Spirit upon them.” Look at the list again. Male, female, young, old, bond, free: Come on, this pretty much covers all of God’s people, don’t you think? Visions, dreams and the prophetic are the inheritance of all true believers. We’re ALL recipients of God’s goodness. Paul says we can ALL prophesy; we can ALL speak in tongues. And we should ALL see in the Spirit. So why aren’t we seeing? Why is the Church so blinded in the very hour that we should be pointing the way for the world in darkness?
It’s because we’ve bought into a lie, a myth that isn’t true and if we’re ever going to see, then we must expose that lie. I believe the issue lies in the transforming of our minds. Our minds have been so brainwashed by the spirit of this world that we’ve forgotten the truth that we’re sons of the Kingdom. It’s interesting that whatever the Lord did, it was always to bring clarity of vision to our seeing. God operates by optical design, designing our lives based on the clarity of perception about God, ourselves, our surroundings and our destiny. God takes our blurred vision by opening our eyes through super-sized lenses.
So may the Lord give the whole Church eyes to see. May He enlighten our eyes in this hour of great darkness to see as He sees. He wants to take our partial vision, make the necessary adjustments, so that we can see clearly the real issues before us. He wants us to see clearly the purpose for which He died for us, instead of the illusion constantly presented to us because of partial sight.
