You don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are. Two people can stand in the same place, look at the same circumstances and come away with two completely different reports, because what we see is shaped by what is in our hearts. God is wonderful, but to our eyes He can seem strange. I remember once holding my Bible up and saying, “Lord, You can’t write.” Straight away the Lord spoke to me and said, “Graham, you can’t read.” I don’t say that with any disrespect. My point is simply this: God doesn’t see things the way we see things, and He longs to give us His perspective — a kingdom perspective.
Born Again to See the Kingdom
So much of the evangelical church has taught people something like this: Jesus died for your sins, you’re a sinner, pray this prayer, become a Christian, and then you sit in the waiting room until you die and go to heaven. Can I tell you that’s not the gospel? When we are born again, we come into the kingdom of God. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” God’s goal is to bring us into that born-again salvation experience, but then to teach us to live out the life we have received.
When I came to Christ, I received new life. I received righteousness. It’s not enough, though, that I simply say, “Great, I’m righteous.” God wants me to learn to walk that out. Colossians says He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. You were in one kingdom, and you could never clean up your act or make yourself a better person. Jesus came, and through His death and resurrection He took that old, decrepit man, nailed him to the cross of Calvary and raised you in newness of life. I’m not trying to be a new creation. I am a new creation. Now I need to learn to think like a new creation, talk like a new creation and practice the habits of a new creation. Paul says walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. He didn’t say that if you walk worthy, God will call you worthy. God has already declared you worthy in Christ Jesus — now learn to walk that out.
Our family became American citizens a few years ago — bang, in a day. I’m still learning to do American, and I get it wrong all the time; I still put petrol in my car and think football is played with your foot. I have the little blue passport to prove my citizenship, but I’ll probably spend the rest of my life learning to think, talk and navigate this world like an American. We are citizens of heaven living here on the earth, and we are learning to live as citizens of heaven.
Same Land, Different Hearts
We think we see with our eyes, but in truth the brain constructs a picture from the light the eye takes in, and there are a million things in any room we never see. More than that, there is seeing with your eyes, and there is perceiving with your heart.
Twelve spies went into the Promised Land. They didn’t go on two different bus tours. They saw the same cities, the same giants, the same vineyards, the same hills and the same rivers. Yet they came back having seen two very different things. Ten of them said, “It’s a great land, but we could never take it.” In Numbers 13:33 they confessed, “We were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Joshua and Caleb came back and said, “It’s good. God’s promises are true. If God is before us, it’s game over.” The ten saw a land they couldn’t take, and that had nothing to do with the land. It had to do with their own hearts. Same land, different hearts.
Donald Rumsfeld once said the real problem is the unknown unknowns — when you don’t know something, and you don’t know that you don’t know it. The body of Christ is full of unknown unknowns. I believe this is vital, because what you see is linked with how you see yourself, and how you see God. God doesn’t change. Fasting and prayer are not about changing God; they are about changing you, positioning your heart to receive what God was always willing to do.
If I believe God is harsh, cruel and exacting, that is the relationship I will have with Him. It doesn’t mean God is like that. It means that’s the God I’m praying to. Remember the servant who buried his talent? He said, “I knew you to be a hard man,” and because he judged his master that way, that is how he received from him. The Bible says Israel limited the Holy One of Israel. You can limit God by poor and erroneous beliefs about Him.
When I was younger, the Lord called me to live by faith financially, but I had absorbed what I would call a missionary mentality: God will meet your needs, but only just. I travelled around the UK seeing God do great miracles, yet I had no faith that He would meet my needs. I would put two dollars of gas in my car and run out again and again. If you believe a lie, it becomes the truth to you. If you believe God saves but no longer heals, that is how you will live, even though the Bible and every century of church history testify that God has never stopped doing what He has always done.
You Have Heard It Said, But I Say to You
For years I didn’t really like the Sermon on the Mount. I read Matthew 5 to 7 like a New Testament revamp of the law of Moses, and it left me wondering whether I was making the grade. I love it now, because I see it differently. Evangelicals often assume the law is difficult and grace is easy. I think it’s the other way around. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). He raises the bar so high that not one person on planet earth other than Jesus could ever do it. If we lived by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we’d all be blind and toothless.
Jesus is not saying, “If you want to get into My kingdom, follow all these rules.” He is saying, “I’ve brought My kingdom with Me, and I want you to see how a citizen of the kingdom lives.” Again and again He says, “You’ve heard it this way, but in My kingdom we do it this way.” We have all grown up in a culture, and we are still shaped by it in ways we don’t even see.
Friends of ours put in one of those invisible fences when their dog was a puppy — a wire around the property and a little collar. Every time she ran near the edge, she received a small shock, and before long she would run to the edge and simply stop. Months later they disconnected the wire, yet she has never gone near the edge since. I suspect she doesn’t even remember why. Can I tell you we were brought up with invisible fences as well? You can believe God for this, but not for that. You can do this, but you can’t do that. Jesus comes and says, “I know you grew up this way, but I want to give you a whole new perspective.”
That is what I love about mission trips. Put someone on a plane to Ireland or France, and the invisible fences disappear. People who would never speak about Jesus at home lead someone to Christ for the first time, and the lie that said “I’m not good enough” falls down. When they come home, they realise the fence was never really there. Jesus broke the religious rules of His day. He healed a woman bent over for eighteen years on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees were furious. Jesus answered, in effect, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” They knew the law, but they didn’t know the Person who wrote it.
Lord, Open Our Eyes
In 2 Kings 6, the king of Syria wants Elisha dead because God keeps revealing the Syrian battle plans to the prophet. One morning Elisha’s servant steps outside and sees the town of Dothan surrounded by the Syrian army. Filled with fear, he runs to Elisha, but when Elisha looks, a smile breaks out on his face. Elisha didn’t tell his servant he was wrong about what he saw. He simply knew there were things the servant didn’t see. As it is written in 2 Kings 6:17, “Elisha prayed, and said, ‘LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’ Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
No matter what is going on in your life, you don’t first need your circumstances to change. You need God to open your eyes. What God shows you changes your perspective and gives you authority to change things. God wants to give us a heart like a lens — a lens through which we look at Him, at ourselves and at other people. Everybody quotes 2 Corinthians 5:17 about being a new creation, but right beside it Paul writes that from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. The danger in the church is that we celebrate being new creations and then look at others and judge them. You don’t change somebody with judgment. People who don’t know the value God puts on them will seek validation from everyone else. Our mission is to live the good news and carry it everywhere we go.
Faith isn’t denial. Elisha never pretended the soldiers weren’t there. What’s true can change, but the truth never changes. Years ago the Lord had me speak Philippians 4:19 over my life every day: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” I remember walking around a little hut on a mountain in South India saying, “Lord, I don’t believe this. I’m going to starve.” The Lord was so gracious. He said, “I’m not asking you to feel it. Just keep putting it before your eyes and ears, and it will enter your heart.” Whatever you keep looking at, listening to and meditating on will end up determining the direction of your heart. One or two years later, I realised it was in my heart. Since then, whenever a need arises, something in me says, “We can meet that.”
The Humility to See More
It takes humility to realise you don’t know everything. It takes humility to realise there might be more than you’ve ever seen, and that the way you’ve looked at something might not be the full truth. Our pride can block us from hearing God. In Matthew 11:25 Jesus prayed, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.” God reveals Himself to those with a childlike, hungry heart, who say, “Lord, there is more here than I have yet seen.”
Let me challenge you. Look at a situation in your life and have the humility to say, “I know I’ve heard it this way, but Lord, what are You saying to me about this?” I’m learning to say, “Lord, I don’t yet know what You are saying, and that’s okay. I’m content not knowing, but I won’t invent it.” There is nothing in your life that God doesn’t have a perspective on.
You’ve heard you were a failure. You’ve heard you weren’t wanted. You’ve heard you’re too old, or not intelligent enough. When God speaks a word over you, He doesn’t merely describe you; He creates you. What God says should define you more than any experience in your life. I want to see things the way He sees them. I want to see Him as He is, and I want to see myself the way He sees me. Lord, open our eyes. Help us to see the invisible fences the enemy has laid in our culture, and to say, “I am not primarily a citizen of this culture. I am a citizen of heaven.” Let us walk in the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Scriptures for Study
John 3:3, Colossians 1:13, 2 Corinthians 5:16, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 4:1, Philippians 3:20, Numbers 13:30, Numbers 13:33, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17, Matthew 23:37, Matthew 25:24–25, Psalm 78:41, Hosea 4:6, Matthew 5:21–22, Matthew 5:27–28, Mark 2:27, Luke 13:12–13, 2 Kings 6:16–17, Ephesians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Philippians 4:19, Matthew 11:25, Romans 8:21
10 Questions for Reflection
- In what areas of your life might you be seeing things as you are rather than as they truly are?
- What does it mean to you that you are already a new creation, and what habits of a new creation are you still learning to practise?
- How does your image of God shape what you expect to receive from Him?
- Where have you limited God through beliefs about Him that do not match His Word?
- What “invisible fences” from your upbringing or culture still determine how far you will go in faith?
- Which of Jesus’ “You have heard it said, but I say to you” statements challenges you most, and why?
- When have you asked God to change your circumstances when what you needed was for Him to open your eyes?
- How can you look at other people through God’s eyes rather than judging them according to the flesh?
- What promise of God could you keep before your eyes and ears until it enters your heart?
- What situation in your life needs the humility to ask, “Lord, what are You saying to me about this?”
