What do you see?

If any of you are aware of the Alpha courses that go on around the world, I hope that you all agree that they are a fantastic evangelistic tool for the world?

If you are unaware, the course is run by local churches, helping the community to explore Christianity and faith. Their opening tag line is usually "Is there more to life".

I have (as some of you may know) attended quite a few Alpha courses and have learnt and experienced many different things on the way, different people views on Christianity, Jesus and their own battles in life, I have even seen people come to God through it (Like i did) But Ultimately the main reason that people go on these course is because there is something missing or not quite right in their lives and they are on a road in search of a truth.

On one of the course titled weeks "The Holy Spirit" the church which I have attended spent it in a day of talks and gathering, and at which point we ask for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives.

With Alpha courses starting up around the country and the fact that we are following the course as part of our home study group these up rooted questions that Alpha offers have been swirling around my mind.

I decided to pray about it, and whilst reading through one of my note books i came across a talk that I had noted from Malcolm Duncan and it just seemed to "fit" with the ideas in my head. So i thought I would share:

The truth in life is a question that everyone looks for and asks; Ultimately, we as Christians only need to acknowledge one truth, that whatever the scenario that God ultimately wins.

In a lot of my recent post i have described some stories of Jesus and how He sees us as creation differently, and we once we have seen Him see creation differently.
Many Christians can still be sceptical with the gifts that God presents, I am. I have never witnessed healing, I want healing, i Know God can heal me, and that He will heal me either in the life or the next. But What the talk by Malcolm reminded me is that I have already been healed. When i saw Christ, when I felt and met with Him, I was healed because He gave me new eyes, eyes to see life and creation differently.

Now, many of you know that our Body is only theoretically a few years old, our skin grows and flakes off, to show a fresher layer of skin underneath; which makes are skin usually around 14 days old. Our hair grow and we cut it. We get new teeth in our youth, even Wisdom teeth later on. Our Blood cells are about 120 days old. Even our bones are constantly changing with our bone cells being around 10 years old. I am sure if we investigated it more and more that we would see that our body changes to create a new us.

What about our eyes? You only ever hear or people getting worse eye sight. Scientists are baffled by the age of cells in people eyes, and can not determine an "age". Malcolm points out that our eyes are very much the key to seeing Jesus and then therefore creation differently, but how many of us who pray, pray for new eyes? Like the rest of the body, we get a chance to slither out of our old skin and become someone new, but what about our eyes?

Don't become lethargic in life and faith, do not become stagnant in what you see, ask God for different eyes.

In Ezekiel 8 you can read time and time again about God talking about SEEING.In verse 6 "Son of man, do you see what they are doing"

AND again,
12 He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’" 13 Again, he said, "You will see them doing things that are even more detestable."

If you study and look over that chapter you will constantly come across see, seen, saw and seeing!

"Son of man can you see" three times He says it, 3! do we not then assume that this message for sight is an important one?

Our we as a society to caught up in being seen, which i have covered before in other blog posts. The HERE I AM culture that we all seem to be living in. How about the culture of seeing, can we see God?

Isiah 6
"I saw the Lord - Here I am"

We SEE it again in Job 42

I have heard of you, no I have seen you.
Have you seen Him?

Psalm 46
Take a look at you God

So, have you seen Him. I know people who say they have a greater connection with God when they are at church. The "find" Him there. I always smile when i hear this. I find Him there.....Just as if we are playing a massive game of hide and seek.
But if it is true and so many people find and see God in churches, then what do we SEE when we see a church?

Do we see the Church as an army, an army ready to invade the darkness? or as it says in Ezekiel are we looking at the darkness in the church?

And finally, the end of this post (Although there will be a part 2)

How do you SEE yourself?

Do we pray to ask God to help us have new eyes to SEE ourselves better?

Numbers 13
"we've seen ourselves as grasshoppers in our own eyes"

Grasshoppers.

What do you see when you look at yourself? would you describe yourself as a small creature, a lowly insect?

Eleanor Roosevelt once said "No one can make you feel small apart from you"

So do we pray and ask for new eyes to see us as God sees us?

God made us perfect, it was us who changed.

I said above about how we SEE church, then I went quickly into seeing us. But that is the amazing thing about the Truth that we have when we come and meet with Jesus. Of course we find God in church, He is probably the only one who has ever attended EVERY meeting, because the truth is He is everywhere, living amongst us at every point, with everyone.

He is always SEEING us, so we should start trying to see ourselves.