Seeing Through God’s Eyes

I am writing this after a video I posted a few weeks ago that I called, Seeing Through God’s eyes, though the producers called it God’s glasses, either way, I think you know where I’m going with this. I have posted the video below for those of who have not seen it.

This video brought to my memory a time about 10 years ago when I asked the Lord to help me see people through His eyes. I know it’s easy to look at people who are not like us, or think like us and start to have judgmental thoughts, I admit, I did.

Then one day, I’m out to lunch with a friend, I made a wisecrack about someone in the restaurant, trying to be funny but instead, it brought great conviction upon me and I started to see a pattern in myself.

What happened is I started to pick up bad habits of people around me and I didn’t even realize it. I know it can be tough to pick people to be with when you have to associate with them because of work, sports, or things like that where you really don’t have control but you can definitely have the Holy Spirit “alert” you when you start to fall into the traps the enemy will lay out for you.

Oh how easy it can be to let your flesh start to rule, and yes, it’s easy to see the faults in others, which I actually did but then I started to see it rub off on me.  And let’s not forget sometimes the faults we see in others is the Lord showing us our own faults or tendencies we may have.

And to top if off, I can make up excuses as to why I was doing what I was doing, and at the time, I could justify them as valid, LOL..but what are they.. EXCUSES! That’s it. No more, no less. Call it as it is.

Thank God for the Holy Spirit and that the Lord had brought me to a place where I was sensitive enough to pick up that conviction.

So on the spot, I immediately confessed to my friend my sin, my pride, my arrogance of my comment and went and prayed for that person and asked the Holy Spirit to help me in this area.

That’s when I went home that night, shut everything off and went into my one on one time with the Lord in my prayer closet. And I do mean… closet, it was a walk in closet and I would go in there  for my prayer times with the Lord.

And I asked God to help me and start to see people how He sees them.

And I can’t tell you exactly how long it took for this to happen but it wasn’t long!

And was it ever life changing!

No longer did I see the “outside” of people but I saw the inside, or as God sees them. Now God didn’t reveal specifics, it was more general. Seeing how people were hurting  inside, serious roots that may cause them to be mean, angry, bitter or  dress in ways that lets call it anti-cultural, where it’s easy for us to judge but instead, it was, what’s causing this? I like to use a phrase Joyce Meyer uses, hurting people hurt people.

There were times I would stop and talk to someone or start to open a conversation with a waiter or waitress and I realized we live in a hurting world,  people are in pain and only Jesus can fulfill the void in their hearts and the deep roots of hurt they have.

And I just don’t mean unsaved people but many of our brothers and sisters are also hurting who may need a word of encouragement, prayer or a simple pat on the back and a smile.

Little things do make a difference.  We don’t always have to say the right thing at the right time but let our actions be our words. Preach always, if you must, use words.

I recall a time in the grocery store where I saw this older lady, who had a look of a very angry person. Normally, I would look and turn the other way but this time, I opened the door for her, wished her well and smiled at her.  She thanked me.

Then I just felt God’s love for her and though, here’s a lady at the twilight of her life and you can see the pain and torment on her face. You just knew she had a tough life. Only God knows what has happened to her but it was obvious she was in pain and probably not much fun to be around.  I think we all have met people like this so instead of looking at them in a way of,  geeesh, I wish they would act better,  maybe we stop and pray and ask God to help heal their pain and bring them into a close relationship with Him.

I know it was for me and I also need to get back to asking the Lord to help me see everyone through His eyes. And watch this video one more time to get a real understanding of what others may be going through.