How Much Do You See?

. welcome back.... for those who have been tuning you you know a lot of what we have been talking about is fear, what fear does to us, what it causes us to do in response, how it can lead us to miss out on what God has for us. and Ps Bowen spoke last week about the company that we keep and how that also can influence us and the decisions we make and the fears that we have.

. tonight i kinda want to continue on this path, but talking about it from the perspective of what do you see?

. however not just talking about or focusing on what we can see with our natural eyes, because what we are able to see with or eyes, is next to nothing compared to everything that is out there for us to see.

. last week i was driving home from Cobram, and those of you who know me well know that i love Christian rap music, so if i get a chance to put it on in the car i go for it (Zoe doesn’t like it much, so im usually by myself)

. so this song “Sunday Morning” by lecrea and Kirk Franklin comes on i have never heard it before and the last lines really spoke to me, this is what they say

“And if what you see is all you see Then you do not see all there is to be seen”

. I have not been able to get these lyrics out of my head since because there is so much truth in these few words.

. on two levels this is really important to understand, on the natural level understand that what we can see with our eyes on a daily basis, is a very tiny percentage of everything that is in the world and if we don't realize that there is so much more to see then what is right in front us, we will probably never go and look at anything else, we would become solely focused on the very tiny portion of the world that we see before our natural eyes.

. Now think about this on a spiritual level! but first lets read what Paul says in

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 NKJV

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

. You see what happens when we allow our personal trouble and our personal circumstances become all that we allow ourselves to see, we become totally confined by them because we begin to believe that what we are facing, or how we are feeling is all that really exists for us.

. we become unable to see anything beyond what is right in front of us.

. We need to deep understanding of the fact that there is a natural world (that we see with our eyes) and a spiritual world (that we experience and dwell in through our faith in Christ) both are real at all times.

. but failing to recognize that both exist all the time, and that are lives are not only tied to the physical realm by our physical bodies, but our eternity is tied too the spiritual realm.

. It will cause us to miss out on what God wants to do in and through our lives via the Spiritual, because God is Spirit

John 4:24 NKJV

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

. So what we need to remember is that what we see with our physical eyes, and what we are experiencing in our natural lives, is not all that there is too see, there is always a bigger picture.

. Yet when we allow ourselves to be overcome by fear in the natural, or allow ourselves to become tunnel visioned on our physical lives and maybe the issues we are facing, the difficulties that we are having .

. We lose sight of the more that God has for us, we lose sight of what God is doing in the Spiritual, and that's what Paul is addressing in 2 Corinthians.

. He does not allow and his teaching is do not allow the things that plague you in the natural, stop you from seeing the great things that God is doing for you through that, he says our eyes and our focus cant soully be on the natural because if it is.

. Then we are seeing only a very small portion of what according to scripture is a life full of wide open spaces prepared by God.

Romans (message bible)

5 1-2 By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

. about 10 years ago i got glandular fever for the second time ( those of you who have had it know what that's like, and whee i get hit by it i get hit pretty hard.

. now id just lost my job before this now i was hit by this sickness, and i was totally unable to do anything for 3 months, i was at home in bed basically.

. and the honest truth is that i allowed this short period of my life to become all that i was able see, i allowed myself to become so tunnel visioned on this moment that i stop seeing and believing that there was anything more for my life.

. I fully allowed what i was experiencing in the natural to become all that i sore, and i know now that what i was seeing was not all that there was to see.

. God was doing things in the background that ended up bringing me huge blessing and setting me up for the next chapter of my life.

. But im telling you i was so focused on this period on sickness, that i allowed myself to believe for a time that this was what my life was going to be like from now on.

. We need to learn what Paul is showing us in scripture, what is what God wants us to understand,

. is that what is happening in the spiritual is not dictated by what is happening in the natural, what i mean by this is that we cannot allow ourselves to think that the physical or the natural that we are experiencing is all that God has for us.

. “And if what you see is all you see Then you do not see all there is to be seen”

. because our focus ultimately cannot be what is going on in the natural, because the natural is only monetary, while what happens in the spiritual is eternal.

. How much are you able to see outside of the physical circumstances that surround your life? how much have you become tunnel vision focused, on the natural and totally forgotten that the God that we serve is Spirit and he moves mighty in the spiritual?

. Lets pray