The Reach For 2020: 3 Ways To Improve How You See God

Let’s aim for 20/20 in 2020.

Why the deal about 20/20 vision in this particular year date? Unlike physical fitness or aerobic classes used to improve muscle tone and strengthen our core, we can’t change the vision we have.

• Perhaps your eyes are normal. You don’t need glasses and your vision is fine.
• Corrective lenses bring your eyesight up to the 20/20 level of visual acuity.
• Or, like me, no amount of prescription will give you what the rest of the world calls normal eyesight. And outside miraculous surgery, that won’t happen in this lifetime.

Or can we?

As fits the nature of this blog, I’m looking beyond physical eyesight. I’m talking about engaging our brain and hearts to see what our eyes are already made to see. And I’m talking about how we see God.

Let’s aim for 20/20 spiritual sight in 2020.

The eye surgery I had three years ago gave me better vision than I’d ever had before. Surgery and prescription lenses improved my eyesight in one eye from 20/200 to 20/80. However, it was up to me to train my eyes to use that new vision.

2020 vision and your relationship with Christ

If you are a believer in Christ, God opened the eyes of your soul at the time of your salvation. It’s now up to you to utilize the vision he’s given you that allows you to view your world and life with a level of clarity you’ve never seen before.

The topics of light, sight, and spiritual blindness are common themes in the Bible. Over and over, Scripture writers use light to describe God’s efforts to make Himself known to his beloved children, and the imagery of spiritual blindness to portray our resistance to follow God’s ways. Upon our acceptance of His invitation, God opens our eyes to His truth. He provides the light of understanding to clarify the undefined. And He offers to walk beside us so we can see Him in all His glory.

As a sight impaired person, I’ve learned there are three ways I can see better. As a Christian, I’ve found those same three principles apply to my pursuit of an intimate relationship with God.

Clean

How many times have any of us removed our glasses, held them up to a light, and exclaimed, “No wonder I can’t see” or “That’s why I have a headache!” Our glasses are dirty. The film of dust and smears of grease limit our vision. When we clean our glasses, the world sparkles with renewed clarity.

Sometimes smudges happen instantly, like splatters of grease from bacon on the stove or getting caught in the midst of a dust devil. More often, grit and grime accumulate, making us unaware that our vision is slowly diminishing. That’s true in our spiritual lives as well. Sin, distraction, or worldly mindsets can do a full-frontal assault, knocking us over in their quest to crush our faith. Or they can slowly creep up on us, leaving us unaware of their subtle influence.

If you want to understand God and His ways, first remove the fog of a worldly counterculture and the smudges of those impurities that separate you from God:

• Worry
• Fear
• Selfishness
• Greed
• Pride
• Apathy

Wipe away the dust of worldly philosophies like humanism, materialism, evolution, tolerance for sinful lifestyles, and false solutions that promise renewed health, and lasting youth and beauty. The result will be a better view of who God is and what He wants. I guarantee you. It will be a wonderful “Ahh!” kind of moment when you get that pure sense of what God intended life on this earth to be.

Can you add to my list? What hinders you from fully understanding God?

Close

At the beginning of each grade, my mother told my new teacher I had to sit in the front row. By third grade, I decided that was no fun, so I convinced the teacher to let me move back one row. It didn’t take long for me to realize that didn’t work. If I wanted to see the board, I had to sit in the front row. It was hard to admit I needed that. But necessity is the mother of persuasion. Even at eight years old, the drive to learn was stronger than the desire to be like everyone else. So back I moved to the front.

If you want to see God, if you want to understand what He wants and why He thinks the way He does, you must be willing to get close to Him and admit you need Him. Standing at a distance, insistent that you can figure out this thing called life on your own, doesn’t work.

The good thing is, God makes this easy. He wants us to find Him and He longs to walk with us just as He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He promises many times that he will stay with us. Consider these verses:

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:20, NIV

“God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Acts 17:27,28 , NIV

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Isaiah 41:10, NIV

I dare you. This year, in the year 2020, allow yourself to get closer to God. Spend more time with Him. Read what He says in the Bible. Talk to Him often. Make Him a partner in everything you do. As you bring Him in to your everyday life, you’ll see more of what He is like and how He operates.

Clear

Here’s part of the reason I can now see better since my eye surgery. Childhood surgeries caused the opening of my pupil to collapse which limited the amount of light that could hit the optic nerve. My doctor widened the pupil, allowing more light to enter my eye.

This applies to all of us. Think of a Christmas candlelight service. While candlelight provides a beautiful setting, face the truth. After awhile, we all begin to experience eye fatigue from straining to see in the dim light. When the lights come on, we can see better because light brings clarity.

Perhaps that’s why God uses the imagery of light so often in Scripture. We need light to see. Light gives definition to those things once in shadow. The world from God’s perspective takes on a clarity we had not noticed before. We see the distinction between good and evil. We understand why certain actions are not wise, healthy, or God-honoring.

This year, shine God’s light on everything you do.

God longs to help you see Him. He wants you to have better spiritual vision than you’ve ever had before. His light will give your approach to life perspective, clarifying how to really look at the world in which we live. Bible verses tell how He will give sight to the blind and open our eyes to see Him in all the fullness of His glory. As you pause to ponder God’s gift of spiritual sight, mull over these verses in the next few days:

• Isaiah 35:5
• Isaiah 42:7
• Psalm 146:8
• Luke 4:18

What other Bible verses can you find that describe how God gives sight to the blind?

God has given us the opportunity to see Him as He truly is. It’s our job to look in His direction and ask Him to show us all that He would like us to see.

Make it your goal for 2020 to see God better and to see as God sees.