Deeper Roots – Through Different Eyes
Throughout the scriptures, there is a theme of needing to see differently through new eyes.
Ephesians 1
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened…
What this reveals is that, when left to our own devices, we won’t see things clearly or interpret them correctly, even if we think we see things as they actually are. And this is where it gets tricky because it requires us to admit something about ourselves, or at least, to invite the possibility that we need to see, perceive, interpret, or even think differently.
This might feel like weakness, but it’s not about gaslighting ourselves into thinking that our experiences are invalid, it’s about opening our minds to the fact that maybe they’re incomplete. In certain circumstances, we all need to humbly come before God and pray for new eyes.
We are all building on a foundation – our lives, relationships, places we’ve invested in, and our passions are developing and growing like a tree. And like foundations (roots), whatever is on top of them is only as strong or valuable as what’s underneath them.
Are you someone who asks for directions, or do you swear by the GPS on your phone? What happens if the GPS isn’t updated and isn’t 100% accurate? We might not think we need it, especially if we are in a location we’ve been before. We might think that if we’ve traveled a road so many times before, we know the way, but what happens when things look a bit different and we get lost?
We must constantly check the signs in the light of something unchanging, objective, immovable, or even ancient. And we have to do it for each other and with each other.
If we’re not constantly humbling ourselves before God and reevaluating our vision, we’ll likely build our foundations on the wrong things and plant our roots in the wrong places.
This isn’t about our experience, knowledge, skill, or even how long we’ve been Christians. The limiting factor here is our fallen humanity. Those other things matter and can counterbalance it, but they don’t eliminate it.
1 Corinthians 2
1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing
There’s a direct link between what we think we see and what we think we know. Our perception becomes our reality. This is why what we choose to see and listen to matters so much. To resolve is to decide how we see and how we know.
Hebrews 12
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
Paul’s talking about his lack of speaking prowess compared to the philosophers and academics in the city of Corinth.
We shouldn’t glory in where we lack competence, but we shouldn’t put our hope in it either.
Instead, Paul talks about the power of the Holy Spirit – his conviction and utter commitment to the Gospel, as well as the signs and miracles surrounding his ministry. He speaks to the confounding upside-down faith and lifestyle of the Church, the generosity, fearlessness, love, and the unlovable, stating that we shouldn’t look or act like them.
“I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible. I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out—disappeared. I wonder how much difference it would make?” -Francis Schaeffer
They weren’t good enough, and we’re not good enough to sustain that on our own energy, vision, or altruism. That requires being plugged into God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit.
What if that was what identified us?
1 Corinthians 2
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. We don’t declare that wisdom, we don’t get caught up in it, we don’t build our lives or give our hearts to it. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him— (Isaiah 64:4)
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
We can’t use the eyes this world gives us to understand the things of God. What are those eyes?
1 Corinthians 2
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
If you hear the words of the Scriptures, Jesus, and think, “That’ll never work,” you might be seeing with the wrong eyes.
1 Corinthians 2
15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” (Isaiah 40:13)
But we have the mind of Christ.
Paul was giving a reminder that amid the smallness and insecurity, they might have been feeling in the culture of Corinth, the mind of Christ is like looking through different eyes.
How do we see through different eyes?
Often, people go to church because of what they get. Now, church shouldn’t be a dreadful experience that we white-knuckle through, but too frequently, we’re looking for churches to reinforce what we’ve already decided, think, or believe. A healthy church gently but clearly challenges those things from God’s word consistently.
We shouldn’t surround ourselves with just the people who automatically affirm and agree with us. The people who are worth keeping in your circle are the ones who love you enough that they’re willing to pay a price with that love.
We need to check the signs constantly. This doesn’t mean we should never trust ourselves, but we need to verify and be humble about our certainty. We should become more aware of (and rooted in) the immovable.
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Want to play catch-up, or are you looking for a specific topic? Check out our collection of sermons here.
Ephesians 1
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened…
What this reveals is that, when left to our own devices, we won’t see things clearly or interpret them correctly, even if we think we see things as they actually are. And this is where it gets tricky because it requires us to admit something about ourselves, or at least, to invite the possibility that we need to see, perceive, interpret, or even think differently.
This might feel like weakness, but it’s not about gaslighting ourselves into thinking that our experiences are invalid, it’s about opening our minds to the fact that maybe they’re incomplete. In certain circumstances, we all need to humbly come before God and pray for new eyes.
We are all building on a foundation – our lives, relationships, places we’ve invested in, and our passions are developing and growing like a tree. And like foundations (roots), whatever is on top of them is only as strong or valuable as what’s underneath them.
Are you someone who asks for directions, or do you swear by the GPS on your phone? What happens if the GPS isn’t updated and isn’t 100% accurate? We might not think we need it, especially if we are in a location we’ve been before. We might think that if we’ve traveled a road so many times before, we know the way, but what happens when things look a bit different and we get lost?
We must constantly check the signs in the light of something unchanging, objective, immovable, or even ancient. And we have to do it for each other and with each other.
If we’re not constantly humbling ourselves before God and reevaluating our vision, we’ll likely build our foundations on the wrong things and plant our roots in the wrong places.
This isn’t about our experience, knowledge, skill, or even how long we’ve been Christians. The limiting factor here is our fallen humanity. Those other things matter and can counterbalance it, but they don’t eliminate it.
1 Corinthians 2
1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing
There’s a direct link between what we think we see and what we think we know. Our perception becomes our reality. This is why what we choose to see and listen to matters so much. To resolve is to decide how we see and how we know.
Hebrews 12
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
Paul’s talking about his lack of speaking prowess compared to the philosophers and academics in the city of Corinth.
We shouldn’t glory in where we lack competence, but we shouldn’t put our hope in it either.
Instead, Paul talks about the power of the Holy Spirit – his conviction and utter commitment to the Gospel, as well as the signs and miracles surrounding his ministry. He speaks to the confounding upside-down faith and lifestyle of the Church, the generosity, fearlessness, love, and the unlovable, stating that we shouldn’t look or act like them.
“I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible. I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out—disappeared. I wonder how much difference it would make?” -Francis Schaeffer
They weren’t good enough, and we’re not good enough to sustain that on our own energy, vision, or altruism. That requires being plugged into God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit.
What if that was what identified us?
1 Corinthians 2
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. We don’t declare that wisdom, we don’t get caught up in it, we don’t build our lives or give our hearts to it. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him— (Isaiah 64:4)
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
We can’t use the eyes this world gives us to understand the things of God. What are those eyes?
- Earthly wisdom, earthly intelligence, impressiveness, eloquence
- Earthly power
1 Corinthians 2
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
If you hear the words of the Scriptures, Jesus, and think, “That’ll never work,” you might be seeing with the wrong eyes.
1 Corinthians 2
15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” (Isaiah 40:13)
But we have the mind of Christ.
Paul was giving a reminder that amid the smallness and insecurity, they might have been feeling in the culture of Corinth, the mind of Christ is like looking through different eyes.
How do we see through different eyes?
- Don’t assume we know how the path goes – this is the first step to getting lost.
- Lean into the right other people – think about why Paul is writing to this group of Christians.
Often, people go to church because of what they get. Now, church shouldn’t be a dreadful experience that we white-knuckle through, but too frequently, we’re looking for churches to reinforce what we’ve already decided, think, or believe. A healthy church gently but clearly challenges those things from God’s word consistently.
We shouldn’t surround ourselves with just the people who automatically affirm and agree with us. The people who are worth keeping in your circle are the ones who love you enough that they’re willing to pay a price with that love.
We need to check the signs constantly. This doesn’t mean we should never trust ourselves, but we need to verify and be humble about our certainty. We should become more aware of (and rooted in) the immovable.
For more LHC content, subscribe to our newsletter below or follow us on Instagram.
Want to play catch-up, or are you looking for a specific topic? Check out our collection of sermons here.
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