We all need to have our eyes checked. No, this isn’t an ad by The Association of Optometrist and Eye Specialists (made the name up) or a reminder sponsored by a manufacturer of lenses or frames. This is me saying that how I see things isn’t always the way they actually are. What I see is limited by the flaws of my human existence and controlled by my willingness to accept that what I see is not how things really are. Is it the same way for you?

Every year I get further and further away from 20/20 vision.

I wear glasses. I have worn glasses since third grade so that I could see the blackboard. Once I passed forty my eye doctor informed me that I, like the majority of the people in this world, would need glasses to read. Four eyes needed bifocals so he could read the small print on the ever increasing number of pill bottles. Getting older comes with more small print to read and less ability to read it. It’s all blurry, just like the way I see God in my everyday life.

What I focus on is in the forefront, the rest simply exists.

What is God doing in your life? Do you share it? With whom? I understand that it is difficult to share the intervention of an unseen being with friends that consider God to be a mythical creature invented by humans to create a sense of hope in a hopeless existence. I may be a pastor by calling and a preacher by trade but it isn’t any easier for me to share what God is doing with those who think God is made up by money hungry TV evangelists and faith healers either. However, I think if we are all being honest we don’t find it any easier to share what God is doing with fellow Christ followers.

The truth is, for most of us, including me, our conversations with Christ followers and Christ deniers are filled with the day-to-day happenings and the special life milestones. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, politics and entertainment are at the forefront of our lives, they are what we focus on, they are what we talk about. The rest is not what we focus on, it simply exists. We often do not see God in the birth of a baby or the death of a friend or family member. Our focus is not on God’s presence in the celebration of marriage or the devastation of divorce. We do not consider God’s point of view when it comes to politics although we often tell others what we think His opinion is and we rarely give a passing thought to His existence when we talk about movies or music.

We need to focus on God so that He is in the forefront of everything that exists.

There are excellent resources on personal evangelism that are based on making our faith perspective a part of our everyday interactions. By doing this, we present Christ following as our way of living and as the lens that brings focus to life itself. The problem is, if we don’t use this lens to take God from the “simply exists” blur of the peripheral to the forefront of life, then we will not have a faith perspective to bring into our everyday interactions. It sounds pretty simple doesn’t it, make God the lens that we see life through and then we will be ready to do evangelism the way we read in books. Simple to explain, hard to live out.

We all need to have our eyes checked because what we see is limited by the flaws of our human existence and controlled by our willingness to accept that what we see is not how things really are.

The diagnosis is the same for everyone, the severity of the issue may vary from person to person but prognosis for perfect vision is great if you look at life through the prescribed len.

Put on your glasses.

1. Pray continually that God will reveal Himself in every situation.
2. Accept that God has a different point of view than your flawed human nature.
3. Always look to see what God is doing in your life.

Describe what you now see through God’s prescribed lens.

1. Tell fellow Christ followers what God is doing as part of your conversations.
2. Ask fellow Christ followers what God is doing in their lives.
3. Incorporate what God is doing into conversations with non-Christ followers.

If we make it a habit to seek out and share what God has done/is doing with those who follow Christ it will overflow into the things we share with those who have yet to place their faith in Him.