The pleasureful and awful of this world alike can obstruct our vision of God. If the pleasureful areas of life lose the necessary intake of the Lord Himself, they inevitably become dull shadows of what could be. The awful areas of this life can overwhelm our sights if we forget to look to God such that we step forward with endurance and joy. The Lord is exalted above all—high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1); all of this life is rubbish compared to the excellencies of Him (Philippians 3:8). Where will we look?
Our eyes — we control how we use our sight. Scripture takes up this interest of our eyes, helping us know what to do with them and the Subject on whom they are to be set.
Fixed on Jesus and His Ways
The author of Hebrews, having finished citing historical examples of those who exhibited faith in a faithful God, comes with an admonishment. He speaks of the way his readers are to live: throw off sin and entanglements, run with perseverance in the race of this earthly life, and fix your eyes on Jesus Christ (Hebrews 12:1-3).
Specifically, the author commends that Jesus be remembered for starting and completing the faith. That is, He endured the cross, and He was raised to the right hand of the Father. Thus, we know that after we endure, we who believe will also be raised to God in Christ. Considering Christ’s endurance of God’s wrath on the cross for the glory ahead — and, knowing His power within us by the Holy Spirit — we are able to find inward strength. Renewed resolve from the foundation of Christ’s endurance finds the places of the soul where weariness can collect, where faintheartedness can otherwise slow a run into meandering steps.
Psalm 119:15 pronounces, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” When we consider Christ’s good ways anew in the various times and seasons of our lives, we who are in Him grow in love for Him. And, what we love, we display, or employ, in our days.
His Sight Becomes Our Sight
His ways can become our ways — His sight, our sight. And Scripture tells us how Jesus used His eyes. That is, Jesus’ own gaze is instructive:
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).
The Son tells us that His eyes were set on the Father, doing the things of the Father — demonstrating a unity in the Godhead. Through the despised shame of the cross, the Father and Son would ultimately be set with the Son at the Father’s right hand. Jesus would endure, and He would accomplish God’s purposes on the cross for our salvation and His glory. With this, He would be lifted to the Father’s side — His joy.
Through sight akin to Jesus’ and as our eyes counsel our will, joy can likewise prompt our actions. Jesus looked to the Father, and we are commanded to look to Jesus, the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). With eyes there, from Him and through Him and to Him we move forward (Romans 11:36).
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The Power of the Eyes?
Seemingly, many an influencer or inspirational writer or speaker has pushed the power of our gaze. We are encouraged to look to positivity until it becomes an inwardly felt reality. We are told to visualize our ideal futures until those futures become ours. Such influential statements can be troubling to me. I am not suggesting that we ought instead slump into the mire of our lives or that we abdicate personal goal-setting. Inspiring remarks can well serve to be refreshing, uplifting, and useful admonitions against such kinds of forfeiture.
Yet, I sense an undertone to some inspirational remarks that suggests the power of inward joy or of the future is found through the ability to choose where our eyes are directed. We have the ability to exert much decisiveness as it pertains to our eyes, certainly. We have control over where we set them — the Bible teaches such self-control through the power of the Holy Spirit and gives us instruction and wisdom for our eyes. Yet, we must also humbly acknowledge what power is not in our eyes, not in us at all.
Humbled Eyes
Our vision itself is to know its place before the Lord. Before Him, our gaze ought not be unfittingly lofty: “O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me” (Psalm 131:1). The power to enact inward joy, the power to determine future events — these are not in us. We are taught in Scripture to temper our earthly visions accordingly.
We must not view positivity or personal aims as the ultimate correctives for our life’s visions. No, the joy and endurance we all equally require for the course of this life has been defined by Scripture as God Himself and His ways — and all that flows from Him alone. These are the blessed ones: all who have a heart that cannot be divided from God as good and the giver of the precise goodness He intends for us to have in accordance with His glory in all of our circumstances. Those with this undivided heart have a glorious promise of vision of the Holy One: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
Forward Eyes
The ultimate future we are to have in mind is Him and the kingdom He brings. It’s to have a singular kind of sway over us: “Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:62). However alarming the events of this world become, we know God’s purposes for this world are righteous, just, and good. We know that His kingdom is coming. As we increasingly delight in the glory of His kingship and kingdom, we have joy to view all of the pleasureful and awful areas of this life as in service of His Majesty.
And we are glad for all personal aims and accomplishments to serve the ultimate end of His kingship — meaning honoring Him as King through our personal obedience to His ways and holding Him as the King who deserves this honor in all the earth. We must not give way to dullness of eyes or overwhelmed views of this life — for, too long with gazes on these and would we be tempted to look back? Looking back might even mean we permit within ourselves a sliver or wedge of a second thought about making the decision to be all for Christ. Might a thought of life grow to a theme of life, if we are not careful?
May it never be. Obstructions removed and sight forward — I fix my eyes on You, Lord: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2).
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Lianna Davis is author of Keeping the Faith: A Study in Jude and Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss. She is also a contributor to We Evangelicals and Our Mission with Cascade Books. Lianna is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She lives in Illinois with her husband and daughter. You can learn more about her writing at her website.
