{"id":84,"date":"2011-08-20T19:42:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T19:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.churchofthebeyond.com\/?p=84"},"modified":"2012-01-03T21:58:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T02:58:33","slug":"single-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/2011\/08\/20\/single-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Single Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.\u00a0\u00a0But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!<\/p>\n

Matthew 6:22-23<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness.\u00a0Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness.\u00a0If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.<\/p>\n

Luke 11:34-36<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The teaching of the Kingdom is a simple thing. \u00a0It is, actually, the smallest of all seeds, even though it produces the biggest plant.<\/p>\n

You could put a whole lot of effort into studying the teachings of Jesus, and\u00a0cataloging\u00a0them, and indeed, many have, and many of these works have been profitable. \u00a0However, whether they are understood and lived is an entirely different matter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Paul explained it this way. 1 Corinthians 8:2 says, “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” \u00a0It’s really quite simple. \u00a0The carnal mind cannot understand the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14). \u00a0You can never receive them. \u00a0You must receive, and rely upon some other faculty than you were naturally born with, which you cannot even see nor comprehend until you have been born again, of water and of the Spirit (John 3).<\/p>\n

The prescription, according to Matthew 13, is fairly simple. \u00a0Allow the word to come into you, hold onto nothing, mix it with nothing, and it will produce a harvest. \u00a0Truly, unless you, Luke 14:26, hate your own life, you cannot be His disciple. \u00a0Unless you forsake everything, you cannot be His disciple.<\/p>\n

Do you want to glow like Moses? \u00a0The prescription is simply to have eyes solely fixated upon the one you love, Jesus Christ. \u00a0This is absolutely the easiest yoke and the lightest load, for, as Isaiah 26:3 says, He keeps in perfect peace him whose mind is stayed upon Him.<\/p>\n

The verse above are often translated poorly. \u00a0The Greek word for “good” or “single” or “clear”, as above, means, literally, “without folds”. \u00a0That is, simple, single, non-duplicitous. \u00a0It is not a good eye contrasted with a bad eye, it is a single eye. \u00a0We do not strive to be “good”, we simply let the light of the Gospel so fill us completely, that it is all we know, think, see, taste, touch, hear, or feel.<\/p>\n

Luke’s gospel explains it a bit deeper than Matthew. \u00a0In some versions it reads “with no dark corners”. \u00a0This is truly the difference between the life of faith and that of continual defeat. \u00a0You don’t need a better spiritual warfare manual, you need faith in God and His Word–alone!<\/p>\n

The word of truth is the smallest little word. \u00a0The word of Faith, the word of the Kingdom. \u00a0Yet, we can live lives with deep fears, shames, regret and anger, and even unacknowledged unforgiveness, simply because we do not see it. \u00a0The call to single eyes, the call to the Gospel of Christ Jesus, is the call to Truth. \u00a0To be honest about what even the deep things that are within us. \u00a0The calling is to allow the deepest, darkest secrets, the most painful parts, the most shameful parts, the most neglected parts, all of it, into the fullness of the light of Christ.<\/p>\n

This is the verdict, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. \u00a0Those who do evil do not come into the light, lest his deeds be exposed. \u00a0Those who do truth come into the light that it can be plainly seen that what they have done has been done by God.<\/p>\n

John 3:19-21 (my paraphrase):<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do we hide? \u00a0What do wee keep back? \u00a0What “folding back” on ourselves do we have to do in order to keep even the darkest corners hidden as we enter His presence?<\/p>\n

His blood covers us completely. \u00a0It sets us free\u00a0limitlessly. \u00a0Absolutely. \u00a0It is only when we have faith enough to lay down our shame, lay down our fears, and come into His marvelous light completely, realizing what we already know to be true about His redemption, that we enter more fully into that realm of His life which He has for each and every one us.<\/p>\n

And, when the power of the Gospel begins to flow around us, we will be fit vessels for His Glory, prepared and equipped for every good work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.\u00a0\u00a0But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23 The eye […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[21,14,23,24,17,7,20,22],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kingdom","tag-eyes","tag-jesus","tag-lamp","tag-luke","tag-matthew","tag-sermon-on-the-mount","tag-single","tag-vision"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2MdeJ-1m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Eagle-Eye-11-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}