Eyes and Ears part 5
I want to start today's Rant with a Bible verse. And I try not to do that. So I'm rambling a little bit first, to get you hooked in. Ok. Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Seems pretty simple right? Be pure in heart and you'll see God? No. There are no "formulas" in the Kingdom. Thre are no "if then" statements. There are no hoops to jump through. The pure in heart see God because God is the pure heart! The Amplified Bible renders Matthew 5:8 like this, "Blessed (happy, enviably fortunate, and spiritually prosperous--possessing the happiness produced by the experience of God's favor and especially conditioned by the revelation of His grace regardless of their outward conditions) are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!" The phrase that really gripped me there was, "regardless of their outward conditions." Because our blessing doesn't come from without. It comes from within. It isn't something we earn. It's a free gift. An inheritance passed down from Father to Son. And let me say this, you're blessed when you see God because when you see God you see what you're blessed with! In the same way that Psalm 37:4, "Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give you the desires of thine heart," ISN'T an if-then statment... (when we delight ourselves in the Lord we find that HE is the desire of our heart)... neither is Matthew 5:8. Jesus is simply saying that you can't see God without a pure heart. You can't see God without looking into the Spiritual realm with Spiritual eyes. But, again, it's not, "I have to make my heart pure so I can see God." It's, "My heart is pure, because Jesus opened the eyes of my heart, and now I see God everywhere I look. Now I'm blessed going out and blessed coming in." This pure heart--this pure river of living water that flows from our innermost being--is simply a heart that's full of love. A heart that knows (and believes) that it is loved, and loves others with that same love! And that's the blessing! Being loved is a blessing. Loving others is a blessing. Hearing (through the Holy Spirit, our love receptor) the truth, seeing (with the eyes of our heart) the truth, and sharing (with every breath we take and every move we make) the truth: That's why we're here. We're here to receive and release the love of God. Not to try to get something, but to share what we've got! Seeing is believing. What you see is what you be. You behold what you become. And faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word about Jesus! So the eyes plus the ears equal the heart. We see and hear, and then we understand. We know, and then we believe. We receive, and then we release. THAT'S the "formula," if I can say it that way. Not looking at and listening to surface stuff. Going a little deeper. Looking INTO people and not judging according to appearance. Listening to the still small voice of the Spirit instead of the screaming and yelling of the world. We have a pure heart. And when we understand that we see God everywhere we look. We hear God all the time. Love becomes the framework of our understanding and everything filters through that wonderful, glorious truth!