Prayer series- Summer, 2006 Message # 4

“Open his eyes, so he may see.”

Do you enjoy visiting Manhattan? I do! Bev doesn’t! One of the awesome things about the city, for this country boy, is walking the sidewalks and looking up... up.... up. The buildings are huge, poking into the sky. The tallest, at this time, is the Empire State Building. It is imposing when you bend your neck to look upward. However, when you step inside, and let an elevator whisk you to the top of the skyscraper, everything changes! From the observation deck on the 86^th floor, which is 1050 feet above the street, the building are not so massive. People look like ants, cars like MatchBox® toys. It about perspective! What a difference a view makes.

Ever been in a place in life where you needed a change in perspective? More than once, I’ve found myself up against a wall that was, to all appearances, immoveable! From where I stood, in that moment, it looked like it was too high to scale, too strong to topple, too long to go around! Ever been there? The larger our problem - whatever it may be - looms before us, often the less of the peace of God we sense. In those moments, we need to be lifted up by the Spirit, so we can see life with the perspective of real faith.

I want to talk with you today about praying for insight, for ‘eyes’ that see as God sees. Previously in this series of sermons on prayer, I’ve talked about -

∙ Listening prayer - “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!” Samuel

∙ Prayer for wisdom - “Give your servant a discerning heart!” Solomon

In our text today, we find another of those great OT stories. Elisha, the man of God who worked many miracles, finds himself in a jam. His aide was panicked by their situation, which to all appearances was desperate. Let’s take a look at the story.

READ 2 Kings 6: 8-23

I always laugh when I imagine how that servant must have felt when Elisha said, “Be cool, man. Our army is

bigger than theirs. We’ll be OK!” More than likely he was irritated and full of amazement at the same time. Ill. -I’ve been there! When I was a younger man who had not had the experience of God’s provisions that strengthen faith, I worked alongside of my Dad who is a man full of faith! I’d start to feel panic about the church’s finances or about some key leader who was kicking up a fuss and like Elisha’s aide, I’d whine.

“Oh, what are we going to do?”

Dad would say so often, “Just trust the Lord. Give Him time to work it out.”

“But, Dad, we need to do something right now! Things are not getting any better.”

“Son, when God says to do something, we will. Meanwhile, let’s wait prayerfully, OK?”

I remember getting so angry at him. I thought that he was just out of touch or unwilling to be decisive.

His wisdom, his faith, are now much more apparent to me!

Though I still have a bias toward taking action, I’ve learned much more to ‘let go and let God!’ I’ve learned to ask for a new perspective. That’s what Elisha prayed for his aide. “Lord, open his eyes that he may see!” The answer to that prayer is simply amazing! Take a look.

(Read v. 17B)

A. Believer - we need to pray that prayer on behalf of those around who are spiritually blind!

“Lord, open their eyes!”

That’s not an arrogant prayer from the lips of those who feel superior. It is worthy prayer on behalf of the spiritually blind. We are wrong to blame the sinner for his plight. Do you know that? Have you ever, like me, said, “What’s the matter with them? Can’t they understand the importance of obeying God?”

Fact is, they cannot! What is so plain to those of us who are alive in the Spirit, is incomprehensible to the natural person. So when we pray for their eyes to be opened, we are praying a prayer of grace. Paul says, "If the Good News we preach is veiled from anyone, it is a sign that they are perishing. .. No one can know what anyone else is really thinking except that person alone, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And God has actually given us his Spirit (not the world’s spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. When we tell you this, we do not use words of human wisdom. We speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t Christians can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means." (1 Corinthians 2:3, 11-14, NLT)

That is why when we want to share Christ with others, the best place to start is in prayer, long before we ever say a word. The most clear presentation of the Bible’s facts will make little sense to a person who is spiritually blind. You can make a wonderful case for Christ { and we should!} but unless the mind of the hearer is prepared by the Spirit they just won’t see it! But, God has commissioned you and me to be people who are light-bearers. We pray for the spiritual eyes of unbelievers to be opened, and God causes the Light to dawn. "It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful." (2 Corinthians 4:6, The Message)

“Lord, open their eyes!”

B. We need to pray that prayer for those in the family of God who are filled with fear.
Everyone Believer, at one time or another, will come to a situation where he lacks vision, where he cannot see clearly what God is doing. It happened to a father with a child who was in dire straits. He brought his request for healing to Jesus, who said, “Just believe.” The man replied, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9.24)

How I can understand that man’s prayer. In a way, he is saying, “Lord, open my eyes. Help me to have the kind of spiritual that sees the unseen.” Our spiritual vision is not always 20/20! Fatigue, overwhelming pain, fear, lying spirits, even faithless friends, can bring us to the same place as Elisha’s terrified aide. “Lord, what are we going to do?” Jesus makes this statement- a declaration really. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23, NIV) In those times we need to reach out to our fellow Believers and ask them to stand with us, to pray that our vision will be restored, “Lord, open their eyes!”

Ill - Three days before Easter, 1999, I was laying on a bed in the ER, with my speech and motor functions impaired and my head throbbing, the Dr. said, “Jerry, I think you have a bleed going on your head. It appears you’re having a stroke and we’re going to transport you to a large hospital where major surgery will done in an attempt limit the damage to you.” Terror, like I’ve never felt before gripped me. Moments later, several godly friends gathered around that bed, took my hands, and prayed faith-filled prayers that I could not even utter! God answered by restoring my faith first, then my health! Praise His Name. How terrible it would have been if they had rebuked me or criticized me. Instead, they supplied what I lacked, praying for me.

Pray for that fearful friend, “Lord, open his eyes.”

C. Lastly, today, there is a time to pray a variant of that prayer - personalizing it.

“Lord, open my eyes!”

Elisha, because he ‘saw’ what God was doing, lived fearlessly. His fearlessness caused him to know the heart of God when the Syrian army was taken captive. The king, reacting in fear, wanted to kill them. The prophet said, “let them live, give them dinner and send them home!” It was counter-intuitive. Who sets an enemy army free? But it was God’s way and it brought about an end, for a time anyway, of the constant raids from Syria into Israel.

We need to see our world with godly eyes. Constantly, we need to offer up prayer for insight, that sees past the moment, that sees deeper than the surface symptoms. "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NIV)

Believer, do you really ‘see’ what God sees?

• When you see people, do you see their spiritual need?

• When you see the world around, do you see the ministry opportunities?

• When you confront problems do you see them as a way God is accomplishing His work in you?

• What’s your vision like?

How easily we become short-sighted people, taken up with the stuff of life - paying our bills, taking our vacations, mowing the lawns, raising our kids, fixing the house. Of course those are necessary things. But, there is more, so much more.

Let me illustrate that from a story from the Gospel of John. When the disciples were accompanying Jesus on a ministry trip, they came to a little village, Sychar, where Jesus sat down at a well. They went on into the village to get lunch. Jesus met a woman from Samaria. Others saw her as a sinful woman, someone who couldn’t stay married since she had 4 failed marriages, and was now living with a man she wasn’t married to. But Jesus saw a hungry soul, a person in dire spiritual need. He engaged her in conversation and led her to new faith in God!

When the disciples came back, Jesus spoke to them about their spiritual eyes. They thought they were in Samaria, a place where nobody could come to God, among people who were God-forsaken. But Jesus saw it differently and said, “As you look around right now, wouldn’t you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest? Well, I’m telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what’s right in front of you. These Samaritan fields are ripe. It’s harvest time! “The Harvester isn’t waiting. He’s taking his pay, gathering in this grain that’s ripe for eternal life. Now the Sower is arm in arm with the Harvester, triumphant." (John 4:35-36, The Message)

Are you eyes open? So many things can obscure our vision. We must pray, often, “Lord, open my eyes!”

In the secular, natural world the motto is ‘seeing is believing.’ In the Kingdom of Heaven, the phrase is inverted, “believing is seeing!” Do you want to live to please God? Eyes of Faith are required. The Word says, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6, NIV)

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So, pray the prayer of Elisha, the prayer for insight that builds faith.

Pray it for those who do not yet know Christ -

“Lord, open their eyes.”

Pray it for the Believer who is gripped with fear that keeps him from radically serving God. -

“Lord, open their eyes.”

Pray it for yourself! “Lord, open my eyes!”

As He answers and shows you the armies of Heaven that stand around you, and let’s you glimpse the power of the Spirit that equips you, - You will became bold in the service of God.

Amen.