by Joel Iyorwa
Joel has been ministering among students in his home country, Nigeria, for more than a decade. He studied psychology at the Benue State University, Nigeria, and has since been pursuing his heart given passion, mobilizing and discipling the emerging generation.
When men come to Jesus He changes their situation and circumstances. He can give sight to the blind; He is able to impart your life with His vision, a lasting and meaningful vision. Cry out to Him like the Psalmist “Open thou mine eyes…” (Ps 119:18).
But then, we find in this story a second phenomenon which is no less something to avoid and that is a distorted or a wrong vision. The Bible says that this man began to see but he was seeing “men as trees, walking” (vs. 24). Oops! He saw men as trees; what a superficial and distorted vision! This man’s vision needed an extra touch from God.
When Saul received his sight back in Acts 9:18 “something like scales” fell from his eyes, scales that blur and even distort the real thing. Sometimes people have what looks like a vision but which does not reflect the vision of God for their lives, they have an inferior or substandard vision which in the end is really no better. These are ‘visions’ that are not cast through the lens of our God, but are ‘visions’ that are socio-culturally guided.
All kinds of scales have been blurring and distorting the visions of God’s people today, especially the young and student generation. The scales of “American dream’ and its equivalent all over the world, the scales of worldly success, the scales of church and religion, the scales of skewed theology, the scales of cultural myopia among others. Why are so many people catching a ‘vision’ of being the latest successful business man and not the latest message bearer of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ across the seas to unreached lands and people groups wallowing in darkness?
These scales tint our view on the latter, they tell us that it’s not the way to be successful, it’s not the cool thing to do and it’s a waste of life. This man too, who has a distorted vision also needs to come to Jesus for a second touch, for a healing touch so that we can see what God is seeing and how He is seeing it. The Bible says Jesus “put his hands again on his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly” (vs. 25)
This echoes the words of a song writer:
Enlarge my heart O Lord That I rightly perceive Help me to understand What the true burden of the Lord is That I may not slack anymore Nor withhold from myself from holy use Perfect my sight O Lord Help me to see as you see Right value for eternal things Lord give me cause my eyes to see That I see not men as trees Nor lose sight of my duty and callThank God this man did not run away with that superficial and terribly distorted vision. He had what I call a VISION UPGRADE. For many of us, it’s not a question of the lack of a vision, or the lack of something driving us but it’s more or less a question of being driven by the wrong thing, a badly distorted vision, an inferior vision we have caught for ourselves, a vision of living and dying for ourselves, a vision of me, mine and I. How we need to upgrade, because a higher version is available; how we need God to touch our eyes again that the scales that have kept us from seeing God’s world the way He sees it will fall off.
When that happens, we will see Muslim men and women as the beloved creatures of God whose worship He longs for, we see the millions of Buddhists and Hindu peoples as men and women who the devil is working hard to keep them from the light of the gospel, we will see the ‘10/40 window’ as a territory over which God wants to establish His kingdom and we will see these and the many more unreached peoples calling for our prayer and action so they can also come to the marvelous light of the gospel.
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Many thanks for this insight for my eyesight