257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105
(262) 763-3021
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We have purchased land on Highways A & W and are planning to build soon!
Drive by and take a look at our future home!
“Seeing is not always believing.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 9th, 2009
Are you ready for a surprise? You blink twenty-five times every minute. Each blink takes you about one-fifth of a second. That means that if you were to take a ten hour car ride, averaging forty miles per hour, you’d drive twenty miles with your eyes closed.
Let me share though a far more surprising fact than that...some people go through life with their eyes closed. They look but they don’t really “see;” they observe the surface but miss what’s underneath. They focus on images not issues. Vision is present, perception is absent. If life were a painting, they’d see the colors but not the genius strokes of the brush. If it were a journey, they’d notice a road but no majestic and beautiful scenery. If it were a meal, they would chew and swallow but never really taste. When you remove insight, you suddenly reduce life to mere existence with frequent flashes of boredom and indifference. Someone without insight dwells mainly in the realm of the obvious...the predictable...the expected...the obvious. The dimensions that interest them are length and width, not depth.
Now please understand; I am not seeking to be critical of those who cannot go deeper. My issue is with those who can but won’t. So I’m not pointing my finger at inability, but rather refusal.
A flesh and blood Biblical example would be that boatload of disciples in Mark 6. Immediately after Jesus had miraculously fed thousands of people with a few loaves and fish, He sent His men away in a boat as He slipped off to a quite place on the mountain to pray. A storm later broke upon the sea and they are filled with panic. Jesus shortly comes to their rescue and calms the sea. As He stills the wind and the waves, He reassures them that there was no reason to be afraid. Mark makes a very insightful observation, “Then He climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (vss. 51-52).
Please don’t miss this! It wasn’t that they were unable to understand. They didn’t want to understand! Their minds were obtuse and that was the root problem. These men were insensitive, dull and spiritually thickheaded. They weren’t dingbats by nature but by choice...and that’s not the tragedy but the blame! They didn’t need Jesus’ pity. What they needed was a swift kick in the seat of the pants. By this time they’d been sufficiently exposed to their miracle working Master to respond with faith instead of fear to their circumstances. Had they only applied what they’d observed earlier that day when the thousands were fed, their response to the storm would have been insightful rather than spiritually blind.
When John Stott, the internationally known Bible expositor, was recently asked, “What is the greatest need of the Church today?” He replied, “The church needs a greater number of deep Christians – Christians that are not shallow nor superficial but deep and committed.” Richard Foster made a similar point in his book, The Celebration of Discipline: “Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
How about us? Do we really see? Or, do we keep having to have the same spiritual lessons repeated over and over again. Spiritual maturity – the result of mixing insight with practice – is too rare today. We often have older Christians, yet we are lacking for truly mature ones. Spiritual discernment, that ability to distinguish between good and evil, between value and junk, developed by trained senses is frequently conspicuous by its absence.
The rewards are well worth it. Rather than groping about, those with spiritual insight are greatly blessed. For example, adults with spiritual insight know how to live simply with contentment rather than being driven by bigger, better, brighter. Parents with spiritual insight usually raise kids that are spiritually grounded, secure, fulfilled, relaxed, free to forge out ideas and to think. Single adults with spiritual insight do not feel that they must marry or be on the “market.” Seniors with spiritual insight do not just look back at the way it was but look forward to what God still has for them in the present and is still teaching them. Teachers with spiritual insight create an atmosphere conducive to learning. Bosses with spiritual insight develop employees and remain sensitive to surrounding needs. Students with spiritual insight learn far more than just the required subjects – they indeed glean an education.
Friend, are your eyes open? If not open them up! Think! Break out of your comfort zone! Apply! Listen! Because there’s a world of difference between necessary blinking and unnecessary blindness.
