Hey, this is James Goll with God Encounters Ministries. By the way, God-encounters are for everyone. And God encounters are for you. This is now God Today. I love that phrase. It is not just a phrase by the way. It is a reality. The book of Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever tomorrow.” So, welcome to God Today.
I just want to share with you a little bit out of one of my life verses. It is on a theme of “open the eyes of my heart”. And some of you might be going, depending upon your age, “I think that sounds like a lyric to a song I have heard.” And you are right, it is. “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. I want to see you.” One of the things that I have tried to cultivate in my life, is seeing God in the midst of whatever life circumstance I am in. Wow. Really? Sometimes we treat things kind of trite. And maybe karaoke? Oh, that wasn’t right was it? Or maybe it is? Or trial and error, or religious phrases? But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a living reality. God today. Being able to see God, or maybe I could rephrase it. Know God is at work in every season.
So, years ago I started praying out of Ephesians 1:17-19, the Goll amplified, paraphrased version goes something like this: “I pray that you will be filled with the Spirit of wisdom, and revelation, and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I pray that the eyes of your heart will be opened so that you will know the hope of His calling, the glorious inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe.
Now, I pray the Bible. I do it like those who are believing believers. You mean you can be a believer and not be a believing believer? Well, have you ever grown stale or you aren’t fresh? And so, you are still a believer but it doesn’t mean you are vibrant. Huh. But we can become vibrant again.
So, I prayed this passage literally every day for 10 straight years. I pray, “Fill me with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus,” but watch where Paul the apostle takes it. And he goes, “I pray the eyes of your heart will be opened.” How about working it like this, “I pray that the aperture of the camera lens of your heart will be opened. So that more light can come in and a picture can be developed. A vision.”
Do you ever hear of some old approaches, it is called a polaroid camera. I know, I know, I know, I just dated myself and that is okay too. A polaroid. How does it work? A flashbulb goes off in a millisecond. A still shot is taken and inside it is developed. Then, like magic, it comes out. There it is. A piece of time frozen. There is an old phrase that goes, “A picture says 1,000 words.” You can take that picture out of that polaroid and you can look at it, and look at it, and look at it. I am just going to tell you, you can see a lot of different facets every time you look. When you have the aperture, maybe that is even the wrong terminology in a media world. I am really good at mixing apples and oranges by the way. Would you have the eyes of your heart opened?
It will result in you knowing the hope of His. By the way, it isn’t your calling and that is where we get really screwed up. It is the hope of His calling. And a lot of us think it is our calling. You know what? It is and it’s not. Because it is His and it is given and then it becomes ours in stewardship.
I just want to pray for you, that God the Father, in Jesus’ name, by the power of the Holy Spirit. That where you have been shut down perhaps in your heart, that the Holy Spirit will work with you and reopen the eyes of your heart so that you too could know the hope, the positive expectation of good. The hope of His calling in your life.
Lord, I just bless these dear people, and I ask, Holy Spirit, move upon them and open the eyes of their hearts so that they might know, that they know, that they know the hope of your calling. Hey! This is James Goll from God Encounters Ministries with God Today.