Or where your value lies?
You can never see through the eyes of man
You must look at your life, look at your life through heaven's eyes"
(lyrics by Brian Stokes Mitchell, "Through Heaven's Eyes"
on the soundtrack "The Prince of Egypt," 1998)
In the movie, young Moses had run to the desert to escape the wrath of Pharaoh and God began to paint for him a whole new identity; from an Egyptian Prince to a man of God, who the Almighty so loved that he called him His friend. (Exodus 33:11, Numbers 12:8)
You and I are beloved sons and daughters of the Father of Life! Jesus has written your name on the palm of His hand and I believe He looks at your name and mine every day and traces it with His fingers until the day He will literally caress our faces in His loving hands when He tells us how long He has waited for that day! Oh, what a day to hope for!
Let's look at two men who loved to see through Heaven's eyes.
The Apostle Paul began his career as a man who was greatly feared among followers of Christ. Paul, or Saul, as he was called then, believed with all of his heart that he had been commissioned by God to rid the land of this "heretical teaching" when he was struck blind during a personal visit by the resurrected Lord Himself! Jesus corrected Saul's vision by blinding him! (Acts 9) The outcome of that encounter with the glorified Lord was that Saul became Paul, his heart and mind were renewed, he became blind to all of his past, he accepted new life as a beloved son of God and was no longer a performer of dead religious traditions. Paul's spiritual eyes were opened as he was stricken with blindness. He received a vision of his place in the body of Christ and was filled with hope for the race that was set before him. We see in his letter to the Corinthians that he literally saw from heaven's perspective. (2 Corinthians 12) Paul was strengthened to endure the perils on the path - he ran the course of his race until the day he met the Lord who had captured his vision and his heart.
David was a shepherd boy who had watched as Almighty God straightened many winding paths before his feet. I believe he made the Lord's Presence his "Google Maps" as he led his herd of sheep through treacherous middle eastern lands. "Thou hast enlarged my steps under me; so that my feet did not slip." (2 Samuel 22:37 KJV) The eyes of David's young heart were thirsty for glimpses of heaven...and God delighted in that...and God satiated his thirsty soul! David knew of the deep love between Moses and his Lord and he desired the same.
"He made known His ways unto Moses..." Psalm 103:7
David was called by God to become the next king of Israel but we know that he had to wait many years before this was realized. How David nurtured great hope in his heart for the accomplishment of his rise to the throne, as God had promised. The stirring, power-laden Psalms still ring out with the hope and love that David had in his heart for his Lord. God allowed David to tap into and taste a New Testament-type grace in those ancient days simply because he yielded his heart to the Lover of his soul. David understood grace and we see how he shed grace in many ways in the scripture-history of his life. One awesome example is the account of the rag-tag, destitute, in-debt outcasts who were drawn to David as he was in exile at the cave of Adullam. (1 Samuel 22) These broken spirited men lived and fought side by side with David, who sang to the Lord and sought His instructions for victory in battle. They were transformed into the mighty men that we can read about later in 2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 12. Through the revelation that David had in his heart - that he was a beloved son to God and not a performing slave - those men grasped the treasured glimpses from Heaven themselves and the negative self images and the depression and the grief and the loneliness left. The longings of their hearts began to be realized, hope swallowed up the despairs of their past lives and they saw through Heaven's eyes what their true identities really were - they were not just mighty warriors for David but they were mighty treasures to the Lord.
"Lord, thank You for opening the eyes of our understanding and letting us see through Your eyes."
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