Open my eyes so that I can see all the wonderful things in your teachings.Psalm 119:18
God is awesome. He’s superlative beyond anything we can imagine. The Bible proclaims this often; any number of Christian songs have repeated the message from time immemorial. Even otherwise antiseptic doctrinal statements elude to it. Many Christians catch a glimpse of it occasionally when a prayer is answered or in an especially moving Christian meeting.
God’s greatness is a central theme of the Christian faith.
The problem is, much of the time, much of the Christians don’t see His wonder. They don’t see His glory, His beauty…and so, like much of the mainstream around them, they mark time. That’s military marching step where soldiers march in place, moving their legs as if marching, but without stepping forward. It looks pretty cool in a parade, but in real life it gets pretty monotonous.
But even in a parade, if you mark time long enough the whole parade stops…maybe. Or maybe the band behind you just keeps marching forward and runs you over. That’s a pretty intimidating thought. Point is, if God does not open our eyes to behold His glory, we’re marking time in the Christian faith…we’re putting in time and going nowhere.
If God does not open our eyes, we will not see the wonder of the Himself. This is because we are not naturally able to see spiritual beauty. It’s something that is invisible to our natural senses.
“The Spirit gives birth to spirit” (Jn 3:6). We need the enablement of the Holy Spirit of God to get a revelation of His wonder. Not that you and I can’t construe the characteristics of God on a surface level. Even the Pharisees could do that. But we can’t see the wonder, the beauty and the glory of Jesus such that He wins our hearts.
Remember the way Moses spoke about this (Deut 29:2-4)? “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt…those great signs and wonders. Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know him, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.” (Part of that wonder was God revealing Himself.)
Translation: They saw what God did, but they didn’t see Him. How could they miss something so obvious? The Lord didn’t GIVE them a heart to know Him. We cannot see God’s wonder without God’s supernatural work in us.
And God promises to do that work in us: God spoke about a coming remedy to this situation in Jesus: “And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Jer 24:7). He’s speaking of you and me in that verse. It’s His promise to us.