So I was watching March 4th's sermon from Mount Ararat Church in Pittsburgh, PA. The sermon was given by Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis and I'll do my best to summarize what he said.
He started out reading Mark 8:22-26 (NIV):
They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him him, saying, "Don't go into the village."
The lesson we are learning today is that sometimes God does things through you or in your presence to show YOU something and not the other person. If you look at the pre-text before the quoted verses you will see that Jesus had already fed 5000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, then fed 4000 with 7 loaves of bread, and performed other miracles in front of the disciples. Then they crossed some water in a boat and the disciples forgot to bring the bread. In fact, they forgot a lot of what they had seen, as though Jesus did not perform any miracles. Jesus is a little frustrated/disappointed by this behavior. He asks them in verse 21 "Do you still not understand?"
So Jesus is ministering and healing the blind man but he is sending a message to the disciples. Let's look closely at what the blind man said. When Jesus touched him the first time he said he saw people walking as trees. Now he's being honest. We all know that people look very different than trees. The point of the matter is that he was still blurry, not completely clear in vision. In between blindness and clearness is blurriness. Jesus touched him again and asked him what he saw. The text says he saw perfectly clear. Had we been in the situation what would we have done? Would we have tried to insert logic because we know that people can't look like trees and not want to sound foolish? Would we have just said that we see people? Period, no further explanation? God wants us to be honest with him, because sometimes we settle for blurriness. Instead of confessing the truth, we take the ok as good enough. Stick throgh the blurriness until you get the clarity. And He knows that we are blurry because we keep bumping into stuff. He was sending a message to the disciples that he's going to keep touching them until they see clearly. Think about it: no matter what you do, He's not going to discard you because you can't see clearly. He didn't think of the blind man as ungrateful for being honest. He asked him a question and because he was honest to answer it the blind man could get the help that he needed.
It's like when you go to the eye doctor and he tests your right eye. And you know the chart says EZBTM. So when you get to your left eye whether or not you can actually see the same letters, you just might recite what you remember so that you won't look like you have bad vision. And sometimes we get help - the doctor may know that you don't want to appear foolish and so he changes the chart FOR you so to help you with your honesty. Jesus will put us through similar tests and tribulations to help us be honest with him. It may be the reason that you just got out of a relationship and don't have a new relationship. If your vision is still blurry, why would He want to give you something new to mess up? Or if you just quit your job, why would He give you a new job when you still want to go postal on the old job? Sometimes you need to clear up your blurriness right where you are before you move on. Because if you travel with your blurriness, not only will you bump into things but you will preach your blurry messages to others. And when you are all blurry no one knows which direction to go. So let Him flip that chart for you.
Growth is not about seeing something new. Sometimes growth is seeing new something you already saw. When you look at something with blurry eyes and then with clear eyes it just may look different. God may not move the devil out of your way because when youa re blurry you may be intimidated by the devil. Maybe he wants your vision to clear up to the point where you can tell the devil to move out of your way yourself. With blurry vision - "you ain't what you used to be even if you ain't what you ought to be" (Curtis). You have to stick it out with your blurry vision - knowing that if you stick with God, eventually things will become clear. Everything in Christ doesn't become perfect for you immediately. There is this misconception that Christians don't have any problems or live a perfectly happy life. You will at times be blurry, but so is everyone else. And once you are clear don't go around judging the blurry ones as if you've never been like that. Rather, help and pray for them that they can get clarity too.
So after this Jesus asked the disciples: who do others think that I am. They answer John the Baptist, Elijah, another disciple. Jesus then asks: and who do you think that I am? And Peter answers "the Christ." Finally, the disciples see with cleared vision.
So the take home message is this: Be honest with God. Be honest with yourself. If you think of things as they SHOULD be and not as they actually ARE then you are not going to get the help you need. But if you pray with an honest heart to fix the things that you need, to repair your blurry vision, then you are one step closer to seeing clearly.
Mount Ararat's website:
http://www.mt-ararat.org/mount_home.html
hi lisa!
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