Blind Eyes

Luke 6:39 ...Can the Blind lead the Blind?  Will they not both fall into the ditch?

I see this in the world all the time.  Blind people leading blind people.  I'm not talking about physical blindness but spiritual blindness.  Look at our country, our state, our city.  Everywhere you look you see the results of the blind leading the blind.  Corruption.  Addiction.  Hunger.  Homelessness.  I'm not talking about a 3rd world country - I'm talking about my own.

I have come to the painful realization that I too am blind.  God has a purpose for certain  circumstances in my life and I have been blind to them.  Instead of  trying to "see" what God is doing my vision blurs and all I can focus on is me.  If I look at my life and all I can see is me.....I'm blind.  I have been in such a place recently.  My friend Vivian has been smacking me and saying to me "Open your blind eyes Momma Ida".  I would just look at her - not getting it at all.

You see I was dissatisfied with the ministries I was involved in; wondering why I was there because my heart and my vision seem so vastly different from those of  the ministry I am in.  I was feeling very much apart from and not a part of.  Why?  Because I was looking to this ministry to supply my needs instead of looking to see what I had that this ministry needed.   Vivian kept saying to me maybe you're not in these ministries to "fit it" but maybe God has placed you there to "be the change".  Geesh I'm starting to dislike those words. 

I am a believer in the saying "If you take the action, the feelings will follow.....".  In other words, I do not sit around waiting to feel like doing something - I just do it.  So I began to cry out to God asking him to open my blind eyes.  Nothing happened at first but as I began to turn my gaze from my life, my circumstances, the world around me and focus instead on the face of my Savior I began to feel the scales fall from my eyes.  I would like to report my eyes are completely open and my vision is clear but I cannot.  What I can say is that today I am aware I am blind and that my vision is beginning to clear.  I can see shadows of men where once there was only darkness.

God is doing something in me. I can feel it.  God is showing me that he has put things inside of me - desires, visions, a heart for the broken - for a reason.  I may not fully understand what his plan is but I can use what I have right now with whoever he puts in front of me. 

God has also been showing me that when he asks us to lead - we need to be careful that we are not leading others blindly.  If he has put me in a position to minister to others than I need to take that responsibility seriously.  There is nothing routine about ministry.  If my eyes are blind & I can't find my own way out of a cardboard box....how will I show someone else the way out?  I must seek God in everything I do.  I now pray for HIS vision.  The steps HE would have me take.  The words HE would have me speak.  God isn't blind.  He sees what I can't see.  He plans my every step.  He forms my words for me.  God is showing me that I must lead with not only passion but with purpose.  Not my purpose but HIS purpose.  I am accountable to God with the way I lead those around me; with the way I minister to those he gives me to minister to.  Woah, right?  I can't get too comfortable in my ministry and lose "sight" of  the awesome responsibility God has given me.  I know it's not about "me" anymore - it's about "Him" but I am responsible for what I do with what he has given me.

As a result, I am falling in love with people that a few months ago  I didn't even think about. I have been given new ministry opportunities and I haven't lifted a finger to search them out.  Things are happening all around me and all I have to do is continue to chase after God.  To seek Him.  To get in his presence and let him fill me.  Let Him wipe the cloudiness from my eyes.  Stay in his presence long enough for my vision to be restored.

Father God, I love you.  Please give me your eyes to see.  Heal me of my blindness Lord.  For I was blind but now I see.  Let me turn my gaze to you always.  All I desire  is to follow you and to see the world around me as you see it.  I desire to see the broken and the lonely healed and set free.  Lord open blind eyes all around me.  In my church, in my city, in my state, in my country.  Let "Blind Eyes Open" be the call of a turning from this world to YOUR WORD.  Let us rally around you, your truth, your EYES.    In Jesus name.  Amen.

Prayer for a Nation

LINCOLN’S PRAYER PROCLAMATION

In 1863, during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called the nation to repentance, to confession of national sins, and to a turning back to God. In a world today caught up in confiict between nations and within nations, a similar call would bring more peace and prosperity than wars or treaties can provide.

A Proclamation for a National Day of Prayer

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of the Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution requested the president to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation.

And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God: to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us:

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness:

All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

Let us not forget that as a nation we need God just as much as we need God in our own personal lives.