Eyes that look are common, but eyes that see are rare.
gracetidings:with dr doug mamvura “Therefore I also, after I heard your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know the hope of His calling..” (Ephesians 1: 15-17).
This is one of Paul’s prayers that I keep meditating on with the full desire that it will manifest in my own life. In this prayer, Paul didn’t ask God to do anything new. He just prayed that God would “open up their eyes to what You have already done”. The only thing he asked God to do was to give us a revelation of what has already been done. He was praying for every believer to receive a revelation of what they already have.
This is a very important point that Paul raised. Some of us are yet to appreciate this truth. Apostle Peter makes the same point in 2 Peter 1: 3 that “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:2 -3).
Peter was saying everything we need comes through knowledge. That’s because Jesus has already given us everything we could ever need when we became born again. We don’t need to get something new. We just need a revelation of what we already have in Christ. Faith is already present. We just need to learn how to use what we have. Prosperity is already given; we just need to learn what the laws that govern God’s prosperity are and cooperate with them. Healing has already been deposited on the inside of us.
Faith is our positive response to appropriate that which God has already done. It is a done deal. Your healing took place more than two thousand years ago. (1 Peter 2:24). Your prosperity was also made available at the same time (2 Corinthians 8:9). You and I don’t have to fast so “we can move God so He can heal us or take us out of poverty. This was done. All we need to do is to thank Him for having taken away all our infirmities when He was nailed on the cross more than two thousand years ago. Unfortunately, some of us are still blind to this reality hence Apostle Paul prayed that God would “open our eyes” so we could see this reality. Instead of us pleading and begging God to heal us or to prosper us, all we have to do is thank Him for having made all the provision for us as also testified by Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1: 2 -3 quoted above. We thank Him for having healed us when we pray demonstrating our faith in the finished work of the cross. God wants us well. He came that we may have abundant life. So, it is His desire for us to get well.
In our prayers, not many of us give thanks as instructed by Apostle Paul. Our prayers are characterised by begging and pleading. Some of us see God as able to do anything but He hasn’t done very much. We feel we must constantly petition Him. However, once we start understanding that by grace it has already been done, then our prayers turn more towards thanksgiving. We need this revelation hence that was the gist of Paul’s prayer.
The truth is that God has already given us His wisdom and prudence making known to us the mystery of His will. In Ephesians 1: 16 -17, Paul was just praying that this wisdom and prudence will start manifesting in our lives. He was not asking God to do something that He hasn’t already done. He was praying that we would understand what the Lord has already done. He was praying that our spiritual eyes would be opened so we could see this reality.
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Our challenge is that we are carnal and so we just go by what we see. We don’t have any spiritual perception at all. Originally God made man to be able to perceive things in the spirit realm. In 2 Kings 6, there is an instance where Elisha was surrounded with a Syrian host. His servant exclaimed “Alas, my master what shall we do?”
Elisha prayed and said “Lord open up the young man’s eyes (verse 17). He wasn’t talking about his physical eyes. He was praying that his servant’s spiritual eyes would be opened. All of a sudden, this young man saw with his heart and perceived all the defending angels.
As believers, we walk by faith not by sight. We should have the sixth sense of faith restored to where we can see things with our hearts that we can’t see with our physical eyes. Apostle Paul was praying that our spiritual eyesight would begin to perceive things that we can’t perceive with our natural senses. He prayed that through the eyes of our heart, we would start to perceive the hope of His calling”. Now that you and I are born again, (assuming you are), you have a calling that is beyond human ability. Most people are trying to find out what God wants them to do, however they are looking for something that they are capable of doing on their own. They are praying “God show me what you want me to do”. If what you feel God called you to do is something that you can accomplish yourself, then you haven’t truly found God’s will for your life yet. God has a plan for you that is supernatural. Its going to take His supernatural ability working through you to do it.
If you can do something on your own, I doubt if it is God’s call. He will call you to do something that is supernatural. This is the hope of His calling. God is a supernatural God and most of us are shooting way too low. We need to increase our perspective. We need to get our eyes opened and our understanding enlightened so we can see the hope of His calling what God’s plan is for you, something far bigger than what you think you can accomplish on your own. God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above that which you can think or imagine according to the power that is at work within you.
The glory of God dwells inside us as we see in Ephesians 1:18. The riches of the glory of His inheritance is in the saints. It is not out there somewhere. It is already on the inside of us. Most believers don’t know that God has already placed this inside of us. We think that when we all get to heaven what a day it will be. What will happen in heaven is you will get a full revelation of what you already have. This is the reason why God will have to wipe away tears from our eyes. We will weep when we stand before God and finally recognize what we had all along.
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
This verse says the glory that will be revealed “in us”. We will see how blessed we have been and yet operating like beggars on this planet. We will realise how we could have raised the dead, opened blind eyes healing all manner of sickness and diseases. This will bring us to our tears when we realise the opportunities that we missed when we were on this planet because we were blind.
May God open our eyes so we may have the true revelation of who exactly we are. The riches of the glory of His inheritance is in us, the saints.
l Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: [email protected] or Twitter @dougmamvura
