“My eyes are continually towards the Lord,” and in Psalm 119:18, even though 25:15, I don’t do to well. Psalm 119:18 is for me -“Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from your law!” “Open my eyes Lord!” “Open these dull eyes of mine.” “Open these wandering eyes of mine and turn them toward your beauty.”
Let me show you the difference between real Christianity and slavery. And this is it. Slavery says “Look you people, you need to get right with God, you need to be Holy, you need to stop doing this stuff, you need to do this and don’t do that and if you don’t you’re going to go to hell.” That’s slavery. Real Christianity is this. If you could catch one glimpse of how beautiful He truly is, you’d have no problem with the rest. Seek His face. Seek His beauty. That’s it.
You weren’t crazy about your wife before you met her. If you were, you probably need to come in for counseling. There wasn’t anything to be crazy about. You didn’t know her. You didn’t know her face, you didn’t know what she’d look like or anything. Man, when you saw her, and it hit you like a ton of bricks, like you’d been run over by a train. I mean, in just a second, everything…. you know. Your sitting there and man… it’s like you and your friends were saying “I’m going hunting, I’m going fishing, it’s going to be a good day.” And all the sudden, your going to Wal-Mart to buy a new lure you need. And “Bam!” there she is. Man you forget about all of the important things in life, like fishing, hunting and everything else. Your a goner. If your friends really love you, they have to rope you down, drag you out of their behind their Ford truck. You caught one glimpse and it was over! Everything in your life now changes. Things that you did care about, you don’t care about anymore. Things you didn’t even dream existed, you know exist. What was that? You caught one glimpse. And then hopefully the more you come to know this person, the deeper your love. Now I’m talking about a frail relationship between two human beings, both of which have great flaws.
So imagine this. You know what salvation is? Your walking along one day, totally blind to the glory of God and God pulls off the blinders. And you go “Bam!” “What is this? A pearl of great price. It’s worth leaving absolutely everything else behind. This is incredible. Why didn’t someone tell me?”
You don’t see someone getting out of the bed in morning going “Oh, my head hurts, give me a cup of coffee.” “Where are you going Joe?” “Ah I gotta going down here there’s a…” (Groan) “There’s this pearl of great price I gotta go pick-up.” He doesn’t do that, why? Because he caught some glory, some essence of this thing. He doesn’t even tell his friend, he gets up, it’s 3am in the morning, he tip toes out of the house, he’s gone like a bandit. What’s motivating him? The beauty of that thing.
In the same way. Church, you catch one glimpse of Jesus Christ and every greater glimpse will lead you to greater levels, greater degrees, of devotion and holiness. Seek His face. Seek His face!
I close by saying this, it’s so very very important. Most of the time the question I mostly get from people who want to grow in the Lord is this: “I know what I ought to be doing, but I lack the motivation.” “I just lack the heart.” What can fix that? Well just think about it for a minute. What can fix that? I mean, there’s no ten step program. I mean what can fix it? Just one thing. Catch a greater glimpse of the beauty of Jesus Christ.
