Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: And he said, this is Elisha's response, "Don't be afraid. For those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And again, I recommend you read the whole chapter because it's a really compelling story and account here. And Elisha prayed, and look at his prayer. And this is the prayer for us. "O Lord, open his eyes, please open his eyes that he may see."

So 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. Now, the servant didn't see these, and of course the Syrian didn't see these because it was in a dimension that was unseen to the normal human eye. Elisha had elevated vision and God obviously had a gift and a call on Elisha's life that gave him that gift.

So his prayer for this young man was, in a sense, lift up your eyes and see things that you've never seen before. I want to show you a dimension that you've never witnessed. It's around us, the kingdom's around us. It never goes away. It's around when you're sleep, it's around during the day, it's around 365 days a year every year, but you don't see it because we're human and we're stuck in this body of humanity in the mundane, in the normal, and in the regular.

Lift up your eyes and look. Those surrounding us are far more than those attacking us. And that's really the crux of this message. We talked about elevating our vision. Elisha's servant didn't have an elevated vision; he was mired in the moment. He was mired in the moment. He was mired in the situation. He did not see what God wanted to do and what God was going to do in the unseen world. Now, I'm going to illustrate this a little bit.

These are my dad's binoculars. I've had these for a long time. Here we go. Let's see who's back there. You don't have to wave, I see you. Oh, there's Sam. Sam had a blueberry muffin for breakfast. I can see that. Someone might want to get him a toothpick. Anyway, and I can see you. Oh, it's a little shiny over there. That's probably because that guy has as much hair as I do and stuff.

I can see. Now, these work good. I can see far off here. But what happens when I go like this? I just want to get a closer look at my knees. And you know, I don't see anything but a green-blue blur. There's nothing there because everything is so close. I'm so close to it, I can't make out, I can't discern what's really even there. I said this works great when I look in the distance and I increase my visual field and I look out there. These work really good. But when I turn these things inwardly, it just looks like pea soup. I mean, there's not a whole bunch there to look at.

So when I focus on myself, everything out there gets a little blurry. I don't see things as clear as they really are. I often don't see things that God wants me to see because I'm focused on myself. The young man was focused like, "Oh no, we've got the Syrian army. Not a few policemen, but an army has come to confront us. And there's no place to go. Elisha, what are we going to do about this?" Everything was blurry until Elisha had him lift up his eyes.

And the point is simple. If the Christian is to grow, we must have a vision that grows with us. And I'm not talking about stuff to do, even though that may be part of the vision. I'm talking about we elevate our eyes off the moment, off the mundane, off the schedule, off the stress, and the pressure, and we see things from an eternal perspective.

I did a bunch of radio shows this week. We have a little radio program that's in the bulletin and everything. And one of the reoccurring themes of the week, it just seemed like it was coming up in every broadcast, was making time. In the midst of a day, of an era of humanity where there is no time, making time to find God every day. Making time to practice our Christian faith. And I don't mean practice it by doing stuff; I mean practice it by drawing near to God, however we do that.

I went to a swim lesson. I was really blessed. I brought my daughter to the swim lesson. I was just sitting there watching Netflix on my phone, which I got really convicted because this sweet woman came next to me and opened her Bible and started reading it. So I judged her a little bit just because she's reading her Bible and I'm watching Netflix.

And it was the day I did one of those programs and I'm thinking, here's a lady that is obviously she's there with her children, they have them in the swim lessons, and she probably has a very busy life because she probably gets up early and has to raise her husband, has to raise the kids and stuff like that. But she made sure that she practiced her faith. That's what blessed me. She made sure that she had her church program out and she was writing something out of Galatians down. And I was looking and looking away when she wasn't looking at me, but I was blessed.

She elevated her vision. The greatest hindrance from seeing things, my friends, that God wants us to see oftentimes is an overwhelming vision of self. We many times cannot see beyond it. We see what we need, we see what we want, we see our dissatisfaction, we see our temptations. We look at our situations and it consumes our entire thought life, or a good part of our thought life.

We're consumed with my wounds, we're consumed with my pain, my fears, my needs, my past, my dreams, my agenda, my insecurities. And the vision that God wants me to have all of a sudden gets really blurry because all I see is me, robbing myself of seeing God's armies in the mountaintops. There's no healing there, there's no strength there, there's no hope there, there's no victory there, there's no liberty there. It's just a blur. There's no definition there.

Now, I'm going to say this to balance this. I'm not minimizing people's pain. You know I don't do that. I don't think that we can just take people's losses and their pain and the things they struggle with and put them in a nice little Christian package and a bow on top and think, "Okay, just do this and think like this and the pain goes away," because God made us humans. He didn't make us robots and lemmings. He made us humans. And real human pain needs to be met by a real personal God on a personal level.

So please, if you ever think I'm preaching a message, "Just do A, B, and C and everything will be okay, and if you have problems it's because you haven't done A, B, and C," you have not heard what I'm saying. There's no formula to this. Never has been, never will be. This is a simple premise I want to bring out. And that's why I brought up Paul in Philippians Chapter 1. I want to lift up my eye. I want to see things through different eyesight. The Lord has a bigger picture for all of our lives than just survival and existence.

In 1942, they coined a term called tunnel vision. You've heard of it. That person has tunnel vision. If you were a kid, these are real binoculars right here, but as a kid I made my own binoculars. All I needed was a few toilet paper holders. You just taped those babies together and you have your binoculars. If you have an older brother or younger sister, you took some lead and you put that around the edge so when they put them on their eyes, they come out with two big rings around their eyes and they never see it. Just so you know that's an idea you might want to implement someday. It even works on husbands.

And tunnel vision is defined in this etymology book as constriction of the visual field resulting in the loss of peripheral vision, or it goes on, or an extreme narrowness of viewpoint. Tunnel vision. We don't see the big picture. Good example, Exodus Chapter 3. Moses, and let's just look at his life. He starts first 40 years in Egypt, grows up in the Pharaoh's house, a little bit of a silver spoon in his mouth. He kills the abusive Egyptian, runs into the wilderness for another 40 years. 40 years is a long time. I'm not even that old yet, but that'd be totally lying.

So for 40 years, he's tending sheep. He's married, has kids, has a father-in-law, has a tent. I mean, he's a property owner and life is normal. Life is the mundane. What do you do? I get up early, have breakfast, I say hi to my wife and kids, we read a little Torah, and we go out and we tend to our sheep. And what do I do tomorrow? Same thing. And the next day, same thing. Next day, same thing. Not a bunch changing. There are no iPads, there are no iPhones. So when the sun goes down, there's no electricity. Everything sort of slows right down and we sort of go to bed early and when the sun comes up we get up.

So he had a very restricted life. And by the way, I stutter. I don't talk really well. So Moses is out with his sheep and all of a sudden he sees a bush that he's probably seen a hundred times before as he goes through this area and the bush ignites into flames out of nowhere. That's intimidating. Has that ever happened to you? Never happened to me either.

Then the bush talked to him. That's really intimidating at that point. One thing to have it burning, but have it talk to you. And the bush said to Moses, God through the bush said, "No, Moses, I have a job for you. I'm going to send you to Egypt and you're going to lead my people out of the bondage to the Egyptian army, to the Egyptians. You're going to go to the Pharaoh and say set my people free. And he's going to give you a hard time, but I'm going to be behind you and we're going to get this job done and you're the guy for the job."

"Well God, if you didn't realize this, I'm 80. Isn't there a younger guy for this job? Isn't there a more equipped person for this job?" And he actually did say that and asked isn't Aaron better at speaking? Maybe Aaron can be good at this job. And he said you can take Aaron with you, but you're the man.

So then Moses asked these two questions that I think we all ask ourselves and I think we all need to answer ourselves. And they're really some of the biggest questions of life. 3:11, and Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" "Who am I?" There's the question. "Who am I? I'm not that guy. I'm not the guy for that job. Give me some more sheep, I can do that, but I'm not a warrior, I'm not a leader, I'm not some national spokesman. I don't want to be in the frontline, I don't want to be in the forefront. I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, God. Who am I? Are you sure that you want me to do this?"

See, Moses had his binoculars like this. "This is my life. It's pretty normal." And God said, "Moses, I want you to go like this and start seeing things in a different clarity and seeing things much bigger than yourself. Because Moses, how I see you and how you see you is very different. And what Moses I need you to do is start seeing yourself as I see you. By the way, Moses, that's the real you, not your concept of who you are."

Verse 13, he asks the second question. Then Moses said to God, "Okay, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I going to tell them?" And of course that's when the great I Am, Yahweh, shows up right after that. So he asks the second question, "Okay, who am I? You want me to do this? But who are you? How do I know you're going to be backing me on this?" I didn't see the army in the mountaintop. I don't have that eyesight yet. I can't see them yet because my binoculars are still looking at myself. I haven't elevated my vision yet.