The Eyes of Your Heart

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, Ephesians 1:18 (NIV)

What a strange expression. I can almost see a Geico commercial where a stack of money has goggly eyes staring at me. Eyes are the instruments by which we perceive things. The eyes of our mind are grasping ideas. What then do the eyes of our heart do? The heart needs to see things and grasp truth and understand that truth by applying them to action. The heart is often the seat of emotion in scripture.

Remember when Jesus walked unidentified with the two men traveling on the Emmaus road. As he explained scripture to them what did they say? "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" Luke 24:32.

The "burning of the heart" was the emotional response to having the eyes of their hearts opened. When the heart begins to burn with truth, when truth takes its root in your heart, it demands response. Response is at this moment the easiest part of the process. God gives us these opened eyes when we are willing to receive them. We sing a chorus that says, "Open the eyes of my heart Lord." What a prayer! But open eyes are not the end result but the beginning. How we respond to having our eyes opened determines much. With open eyes we know the certainty of God's work in our lives. We know that He is real and that our hope and calling is genuine. We know that the power of His presence is real. We know that we are becoming a people of Grace.

Satan's strategy for Believers young and old is simple. Separate the child of God's heart from truth. It is a well worn pattern of attack. When they eyes of your heart are closed to God's word, you drift. You get discouraged and give up on church, you drop out of fellowship with other believers. This is why is it critical to pray for one another. We need to pray with Paul that God will open the eyes of our friends who are drifting from the Lord. We need to pray this for ourselves also.

It is not enough to simply teach truth. You cannot effect the whole person until the eyes of their heart are opened and enlightened by truth. When truth makes the journey from the head to the heart it grips the emotions and change is transformed from undesirable to desirable as the next simple step. This is when we can see growth as we become a people of grace.
Pastor Ed Litton