It Is WrittenSample

Open Your Spiritual Eyes

By Robert Morris

A few years ago, I was preaching at a church, and when I got back to my hotel room, I turned on the TV to a Christian television station. There was a guy preaching on Mark 8. In that Scripture, Jesus spit in the man’s eyes and said, “What do you see?” The man said, “Men like trees, walking.” Then He touched him again and the man was healed. The preacher on TV said, “See, even with Jesus it doesn’t always work the first time.” I couldn’t believe he said that! So I set out to find the meaning of that verse. I studied until 1:00 am, and then I heard the Lord say, “Why don’t you just ask Me what it means?” Before I could even ask Him, the Lord began revealing the meaning to me. It wasn’t that it didn’t work the first time. It’s that before He opened the man’s natural eyes, He opened his spiritual eyes.

For a little context, let’s look at what happened before this story in Mark 8. Jesus had just finished feeding 4,000 people with only seven loaves of bread and the Pharisees came to Him and said, “Show us a sign.” Jesus was probably thinking, Were you not just here for lunch? Talk about spiritual blindness! But it continued as Jesus and the disciples got on a boat. The disciples forgot to bring bread, and when Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” they thought He was mad because there was no bread. Do you think Jesus, who just fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread, was worried about not having bread? He wasn’t talking about physical bread. He told them they didn’t understand what He was talking about because they have eyes but do not see. Then, as soon as they got off the boat, Jesus opened the eyes of the blind man. Do you see the symbolism there?

Maybe you’re thinking you need Jesus to open your spiritual eyes, too. The Bible says there is a veil over our eyes until we believe. But even after that, we must beware of our pride. If you read the Bible and think you know everything already, you won’t see anything. It wasn’t until I asked God to tell me the meaning of the story that I understood. If you take your Bible and pray, “Lord, I am blind without You. I can’t understand the Bible unless You show me,” then He will open your spiritual eyes, and things will begin to jump off the page.

Prayer

Lord, I can’t truly see or hear without You. I want to receive spiritual sight today. I want Your words to jump off my Bible’s pages at me. Help me to see things in Scripture that I didn’t see before. I want You to speak to me through Your Word for my job, career, family, marriage and my life. I want to live by the Word of God, not by natural bread, alone.

Memory Verse

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119:105