“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”   Matthew 6:22-23

 

No matter the challenge,

my heart needs to hear God’s revelations to me, about me.

 

Most of us like to live in ignorance about some things. If we don’t know about it, we don’t have to worry about it. If we don’t have to worry about it, life is easier… There’s an idiom that says “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” I don’t really hold to that saying, but aside from that, what about the things we really do know, yet still choose to treat as if we don’t?

 

Ignorance may be bliss, but choosing to be ignorant is not! We’ve probably all seen someone stick their fingers in their ears and say “I don’t want to hear that” when they get uncomfortable with what’s being said. What they are really saying is, “I don’t want to be responsible for holding that knowledge… I don’t want to deal with it.” We Christians can sometimes do that with things that are revealed to us about how to live the Christian life.

 

There’s a “scary” word in a Christian’s vocabulary: conviction. Really, it isn’t a scary word at all; it’s a wonderful word. It indicates that it’s time to move on to something new; we are ready to see the next truth to be applied to our life. This process will never stop as long as we are alive. The "scary part" starts if we refuse to hear the truth. If we figuratively put our fingers in our spiritual ears and say “I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to be responsible for holding that knowledge… I don’t want to deal with it.”

 

Truthfully, there will be some times when we are ready to embrace the new thing and run with it. We’ll be excited about the revelation, and we’ll want to apply it immediately. But sometimes, the truth will be so challenging, we’ll want to pretend we didn’t hear it. God is always willing to work with us when we receive that type of truth. He’s patient and kind, just like the “fruit” He produces in us. He’s patient to work out the new thing in us with kindness, with our best interest and welfare in His heart and mind, and He knows it might take a while for it to be fully applied ☺

 

But what happens if we continue to refuse to “hear” it? What happens when along with our spiritual stance of having our fingers in our ears, we accompany it with our own voice making nonsensical noises to block out what God is telling us? What happens when we eventually convince ourselves that no change is needed, and that we are completely good where we stand? Then according to Jesus, Who was the speaker of this verse in Matthew, that light will become darkness, and how great that darkness will be! The new truth that He has shown us will have been snuffed out by our selfish stubbornness, and now is “greatly dark.”

 

When we take a truth revealed and refuse to see/hear it, when we get to the point where we can’t ignore it any longer because God keeps bringing it to us, when we then justify our “being exempt from it” for whatever reason, and compartmentalize it away as “doesn’t apply to me,” when we do all that… How great is the darkness that is now in us! It’s a darkness that literally says we are smarter than God—we become like the fool. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” If we know better than He, how can He truly be God...

 

Soooooooooo…. If God is speaking, let’s listen. We can’t miss the encouraging, uplifting part of this passage from Matthew: “If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.” I want my eye to be good. I want to see and hear and apply all the truths God sends my way. I know some will be easy and some will be extremely challenging. With God’s patience and His faith in me that I am ready to receive them, I’m ready! Let’s go!!