This is part of a series of writings I am working on to expand the post I published last week, Pure In HEART. This series will be taking a more detailed look at each point of that post. Today I look at part two, Pure in Eyes.
Again, the seeds for this series came from God through a song that took up residence in my mind for the better part of a week. 🙂 I think the song may be titled, “Highway To Heaven”, but the line that stuck with me is, “it’s a highway to heaven . . . none can go up there . . . but the pure in heart . . . well, it’s a highway to heaven . . . walking on the King’s highway!”
The phrase that continually jumped out at me was the idea of “pure in heart“. I believe God has given me another acrostic to provide the framework for a sermon He has been giving me — and thus a series of writings. What does it mean to be pure in heart? I want to look at five areas that should help lead us toward being pure in heart and I begin with this post focused on what we take in through our eyes.
Remember the old church preschool song? “Oh, be careful little eyes what you see . . .”. The Bible has much to say about the seriousness of what we take in through our eyes. The Psalmist writes, “Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.” (Psalm 119:36-37) Jesus tells us, “And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” (Matthew 18:9) The Psalmist also tells us to “set no worthless thing before my eyes” and indicates that some have fallen away because of the things they have allowed their eyes to dwell on.
We live in a visually bombarded society with images constantly coming at us varying from that of great wholesome beauty to that of intense evil. Could you imagine if there were a filter for our eyes that would automatically block out any unwholesome view? How much of your favorite TV show would you end up actually seeing? How much of your on-line computer time would be dark because the visual is blocked? I hope it is obvious that if we are intentionally filling our eyes with worthless things then we have a serious problem.
For most of us though, the purity of our eyes is more often contaminated by what we unintentionally observe than by what we seek out. In some ways this is even more dangerous to us because it ends up filling our eyes, and our mind, in a way that we hardly recognize the influence it has over us. What we see over and over, whether intentionally or not, influences what we believe is normal and right. This visual influence will attack your area of greatest weakness and you won’t even realize why you’re unhappy with your looks, your body size and image, your car, your home, your relationships, or whatever it is that you’ve continually seen that looks better to you.
So how do we maintain a life that is pure in eyes? Sometimes we have to go to the extreme of cutting out, or blocking, images that are constant stumbling blocks to us. This “gouging out of our eyes” to images that we cannot gain mastery over is preferrable to allowing what we see to draw us away from our relationship with Christ. Sometimes we just need a reminder, some accountability, to not let our eyes dwell on that which is impure. It is bad enough to see certain things but to have our eyes return to them a second, third, fourth, . . . time probably means we are not all that serious about being pure in eyes.
If the eyes are indeed the windows to the soul, what amount of light are you allowing into yours? Are you maintaining a pure heart through a deliberate approach to maintaining purity in what you allow before your eyes?
I pray that you and I would pursue God faithfully and be found “pure in HEART” because we have paid attention to purity in our Humor, Eyes, Attitude, Relationships, and Teaching!
Tom's Treasure 