Tag Archives: Ephesians 6:10-20

How “doing drugs” opened my eyes

 

My cousin Darlene loves to send me funny get well cards. The latest one says the key to healing is having a positive attitude…(open card) “and enough painkillers to drop a horse!” Wow. I can associate with that. Sometimes I shake my head at having gone from being healthy and taking a single multivitamin each day to now taking handfuls of medicines intended to make things right and decrease pain. With hundreds of abscesses pressing against muscles, tendons and nerves throughout my arms and legs, I tried a number of different pain meds to see what might help. I’ve settled on morphine for the time being. I had tried dilaudid which gave me a wonderful peaceful feeling, but it also came with hallucinations, especially when my eyes were closed. They weren’t horrible frightening ones but they altered my perception of reality. When I forced my tired eyes to open, the hallucinations vanished.

 

The experience led me to think about how we go through life, eyes open to some things and shut to others. It’s easy to live in a state of denial, though reality usually catches up with us at some point. With eyes open to the lure of low interest rates and deferred payments, we close our eyes to the reality of living beyond our means. With eyes wide open to our drive for success, we close our eyes to the effect it has on our family. Pain demands we pay attention to it, but focusing so much on our sorrows causes us to miss out on seeing the real joys still before us. Eager to pursue the comforts of life we may miss out on the very purpose of living. With our day schedules filled to the brim with activities we don’t realize how closed our eyes are to the reality of God’s plan for us.

 

I am fully persuaded that there are two realities that face us every day of our lives. There is the physical reality that we perceive with our senses. We’re well in tune to this as we constantly are exploring our world through what we see, hear, and touch. We are not unlike the “doubting Thomas” who wanted tangible proof of the Savior’s resurrection. In fact, we often measure our progress and success by what we see and measure. In the presence of measurable things, we also face another reality: the spiritual world in which we live. If we are to believe the bible, we will recognize that most of our problems and struggles come from this spiritual realm:

 

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12

 

Doesn’t this counter what we typically think? Don’t we typically perceive our woes are related to that disagreeable person in our life, the dead-end job situation, volatile financial markets, the “other” political party, and our own battles to stay happy and healthy? True enough, there are real struggles in this physical world, including those that can be overwhelming and seem to threaten our sanity. But realizing there are also very real spiritual battles being waged around and within us, gives us the ability to respond to both the physical and spiritual threats. In fact, this spiritual awareness offers us the only real control we hope to have in life.  We don’t control the behavior of others, the weather, political forces, the value of the dollar, or even our health. But we do have control, if we discipline ourselves, to respond with spiritual power.

 

Each day we’re confronted with battles for our mind…battles that decide who will control our thoughts and emotions and our response to the circumstances we face. Will we live with anxiety or peace, fear or assurance, despair or hope, our own weakness or God’s strength? We’re well counseled to prepare ourselves for these spiritual battles by equipping ourselves every single day with a type of spiritual “armor”: the belt of the truth of God, the breastplate of righteousness, boots of peace the gospel offers, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit of God which is the Word of God. Add to that persistent prayer and you have an effective strategy for dealing with the seen and unseen realities you’ll face today. (Ephesians 6:10-20)

 

When our eyes are closed, we don’t see the need for being armored. Battles? What battles? Everything seems pretty good to me when my eyes are closed. But when we ask God to open our eyes to our full reality (physical and spiritual), we quickly recognize the need to go into each day well equipped for the battles before us.  Being well equipped allows us to stand firm and not be shaken or knocked down when the things around us tumble and shake.

 

We become “more than overcomers” when we keep our eyes wide open to what God wants us to see. May having the eyes of God be your daily prayer and discipline.