The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: What is it that you need to get out from under? What is it that's pressing you down and just pressing the very life and joy out of you? Well, in order to get out from under it, you have to have somebody to help you carry it. And that's Jesus.

Guest (Male): We depend upon our physical eyes to navigate the world around us, but scripture speaks of another kind of vision, the eyes of faith. Those spiritual eyes allow us to look beyond present circumstances and fix our attention on Jesus.

Today, Pastor Jack Morris begins a two-part teaching on spiritual vision, showing us how seeing Christ through the eyes of faith can bring hope and healing to the deepest places of our lives. Here is "Seeing What Cannot Be Seen."

Pastor Jack Morris: The title of the sermon is "Seeing What Cannot Be Seen." This week and next week, I want to talk to us about the eyes of the soul. I'm going to talk about spiritual insight. Ever so often, we need an eye examination to correct our vision, and I believe that's what the Holy Spirit is going to do for us today.

He's going to give us an eye examination, and through the surgery of the word of God that is a double sword, the instrument of surgery in the surgeon's hand, the Holy Spirit is going to help us to see the word of God and see things that perhaps we've never seen before and in seeing these things, receive a blessing from God.

Now this week and next week will be a sermon on how faith is developed and how the reality of faith comes into being. I truly believe that as we get this message, this truth enters our hearts and that we will not only be listening with our ears but listening with our hearts, we're going to experience answers to prayer more so than at any time before because we're going to see our involvement and the Holy Spirit's involvement and how his involvement and our involvement can couple together to bring about the miracle that God would have us to have.

Now I'm going to illustrate this by going to a story in Genesis chapter 21. It's the story of Hagar. How Hagar and her son Ishmael were sent into the desert to literally die. Let me give you a little bit of background to the story. Abraham did not have a son. Sarah is old, Sarah tells Abraham to have a son by Sarah's slave girl, Hagar. In those days, in ancient times, it was a very acceptable thing for a man to have concubines and to have wives depending on his income and how he could support them. So he had a son by Hagar, Genesis 21.

Later, he had a son by his wife Sarah. And Sarah became very possessive of her one and only son, and when she saw this other son of her husband's, Ishmael, mocking her son, she became very angry and she said to her husband Abraham, "You send that woman, my slave girl, and that son of yours away. I will not have him competing for the inheritance of Isaac."

Well, it grieved Abraham very much because Ishmael was also his son, but he listened to his wife and sent her away. He gave her water to drink and food to eat and bid them farewell into the desert. Hagar takes Ishmael, her son who is now about 13 years old. Isaac was about two or three years old at that time. She takes her son Ishmael and she goes into the desert and she keeps walking, keeps going, keeps going until the food and the water ran out.

And when the food and the water ran out and the thirst was so great, she takes Ishmael and she puts him under a bush for shade and she goes on, the scripture says, about as far as a person could shoot an arrow. She said, "I will not be there to watch my son die. I can't stand to see my son die." Now this is a sad story, it's a cruel story, but in God, everything turns out okay provided we are in God.

She was now surrounded by death. Death was imminent. Death was only hours away for both of them. The son began to cry and the angel of God in the Old Testament, always when it speaks of the angel of God in the Old Testament, we know him as Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The angel of God heard the boy cry, appeared to the boy, and then appeared to the mother and told the mother that the child and the mother would not die and the scripture says, let me read the scripture, it's in Genesis 21:19, "Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water."

God opened her eyes. When she is surrounded by death, death is the only thing that is left, death, then God opened her eyes. What eyes did God open? There's a spiritual part of us that can see things that will bring life and health and blessing to us that the natural eye cannot see. Now that's what I'm talking about this morning. There are eyes in you. There are spiritual eyes inside you. Some would call it imaging. I'm not going to call it imaging, but it's the same thing. I'm talking about the eyes of faith.

God has blessed every human being with a great gift called the gift of imagination. As far as we know, only humans have that gift, and God wants us to do our dreaming and do our visioning through faith. The scripture speaks about old men shall dream dreams and young men shall see visions. Every one of us today have that capacity. So I want you to think about the eye of the soul in you and to begin to exercise it, and I'm going to tell you how as I go more into the sermon today.

Today's sermon is going to help us to deal with those inner emotions within us and find ways of healing. Next week's sermon is going to help us to use the eye of our soul to experience external blessings and see external things. Today we see Hagar so grieved within and so spiritually blind without. There was no one and no way that she could heal her sadness, her depression, the feeling of death that had cast a shadow over her and her son and there was no way for her to see this fountain, but God came.

And God turned the lights on inside and because she saw things that she could not see in the flesh, she was saved, she was healed and so was her son and Ishmael grew up to be the father of great nations also just like Isaac. We can trace the ancestry of the Arabs all the way back to this young man, Ishmael.

The eye doctor, the ophthalmologist sometimes will talk about a lazy eye. I'm not sure if I know what a lazy eye is, but it seems to me that a lazy eye is an eye that will let the other eye do all the work. The eye will work and the lazy eye will when the healthy eye turns quickly, the lazy eye will turn but it'll turn much more slowly, then the other healthy eye will turn quickly and the lazy eye will turn much more slowly. It allows just the one eye to do the work and it sort of does catch up.

Well, inside you, there's the eye of the soul that most of us have not used and it has become a lazy eye, it has atrophied and this is why our faith is not receiving the impetus and the answers to prayers that we would like to see because before the answer comes, in your heart, in your soul, you must see the answer. We pray for many things, but we never see the many things becoming a reality. We have to see it. We have to picture it. We have to grasp it and then we can pray and then the results come.

See, we have what I'm going to call spiritual myopia. That's nearsightedness. The light rays from a distant object will come and it is supposed to fall upon the retina. And if it falls upon the retina, if it's focused on the retina, then I get a clear vision or a clear image of what I'm looking at. But because I take these glasses off, everything now looks just a little blurred and fuzzy. Everything's fuzzy. Whoa, where did you go?

See, the light rays from your face or from any object is not falling on the retina, it's falling prematurely, it falls in front of the retina and that's why the blurred vision. So what it is, we are not somehow grasping and catching hold of the eternal rays of the promises of God. The promises of God are not falling upon the retina of our faith and so answers to prayer become very dim, very fuzzy, if there's any answer at all, and so we're not getting it.

So this is what we're going to be talking about today and next week to help us to see with the eyes of faith, to bring up this lazy eye inside and get it working again. You see, these two eyes are always working. Everything I look at is temporal, passing, ephemeral. Everything I look at is going to pass away, and I use these eyes all the time. I'm looking and seeing and driving and reading all the time I'm using these eyes. And inside me is a lazy eye that I rarely read the Bible, and when I do read it, I read it in a rather perfunctory ritualistic way, I don't see it as applying to me and so this portion of faith inside me is never growing because it can never see anything.

Today I want us to get hold or allow the truth of God's word to get hold of us because we will see things that will give us life. Just as Hagar was surrounded by death, you and I are surrounded by death. Everything you look at is dying and turning back to the earth. Everything is going to decay and we keep looking and focusing on time and temporal things. God wants us not only to do that, he does want us to do that, but in addition to that, he wants us to see and focus on eternal things and allow the promises of God to fall upon our heart and cause us to believe to the seeing of great and wonderful things in the Lord.

Now in Hebrews 4:14, the scripture says, "Let us hold firmly to the faith we possess." This simply means that there are troubles and problems, temptations and persecutions, setbacks and discouragements, there are just a host of things that are militating against your spirituality to cause you and me to lack faith or to even lose faith. Now why would he say let us hold firmly to the faith if we couldn't lose it? If you can't lose it, why be worried about holding firmly to something that you can't lose?

Now I've seen many a Christian today in my time who have lost their joy, who have lost their happiness, who have lost their commitment and problems come to cause us to weep. Hagar was weeping. She did not see life. She didn't see any way out. There was only death and so she wept, and how many things that will come into your life, into your family, into your business, into your career that will cause your heart to be broken and if you don't shed tears with these eyes, yet your heart is heavy and there are tears in your heart.

God is saying, "I want to get involved with you, your family, your life, your career and I want to show you things that you haven't seen before and I want you to cooperate with me because I want to perform miracles and bring answers to prayer." Now this is what God is saying in his word to us. So how do we hold firmly to the faith we possess? How do I grasp it? How do I hold on to it? The scripture says that we read just a moment ago in your hearing, Hebrews 12, verse 2 says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith."

He's the one that gives us faith, he's the one that's going to grow faith in us, he's the one that's going to mature the faith to its perfect state. But we have to fix our eyes on Jesus. Now what eyes are he talking about? What eyes? I can't see Jesus. Jesus in the flesh has been gone 2,000 years. But the scripture says, look at this, look at what I'm going to read to you now, and I think you have it in your notes. Moses, Hebrews 11:27 says, "By faith Moses persevered because he saw Jesus who is invisible."

He saw Jesus. Moses, look up here at me for just a moment. Moses looked ahead centuries into the future and saw Jesus and Jesus hadn't been born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary, but he could look ahead and see him who is invisible. Now if Moses could look ahead and see him, you and I now are called upon to look back 2,000 years ago and see him who is invisible and in seeing him, he then becomes active in our lives and we receive the blessings that he tells us about in his word.

We must see him. Now we can't see him with these eyes, but there are the eyes of the soul, the eyes of spiritual faith within us that can see him and can focus upon him. Now I want you to open your Bible to Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15, and read this with me in unison. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15. Okay, do you have your Bibles open? Hold it up and let's read it together loudly. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin."

Now he was tempted in every way as we are. In your outline, you have four blank lines and I'm going to ask you to write in them in just a moment, and as you write in them, I want you to see which one or ones that you can identify with. I should have maybe put a number five, a blank line for you to write in something that I do not mention. You and I must look back to Jesus Christ and see him experiencing and suffering the very same emotions that we are experiencing and suffering today.

And when I can look back and see him going through what I'm going through, it is that look of the soul that brings about the healing in my heart in the present. Now I'm going to tell you a very poignant story. It's a true story. Would I tell you any other kind? I don't want to really tell this story, but I think it illustrates the point so clearly.

This story I'm going to tell you is not one that I have been involved that I was involved in, but a pastor by the name of Calvin Miller. Calvin Miller was a pastor up until his mid-50s and then he resigned the pastorate and became a professor and is still a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He tells the story of an incident that happened during the race riots in Los Angeles. You may remember those race riots. The ghettos were burning. Now you have to get the picture.

The ghettos are burning, the race riots are like they have never been and haven't been since in the United States. Race tensions were at an all-time high. A Black man that is a very close friend of Pastor Miller was jogging through a suburban neighborhood that was almost all white. As he was jogging through the neighborhood, a car of young whites came by. Now the ghettos are burning, tensions are high, hate rules the day.

As the young whites rode by, just some young boys, they rolled the window down and when they went by, they spit in his face, made some obscene gestures and called him some very degrading names. Now Pastor Miller said that this man, this Black man is a fine specimen of a man, a bearded man, and the Black gentleman told him later, he said, "I became so angry." He said, "If I could have caught up with them, I would have literally ripped the bumper from the car and I would have beat them severely."

But they sped off, but the Black man kept jogging, kept jogging, and then something happened to the Black man in his heart. Here's what I want you to hear. He reflected on the cross. He said, "Somehow I began to think of Calvary. I began to think of Jesus." He said, "I felt so ashamed, so humiliated. I felt a loss of the sense of self as somebody else's spittle was in my face and drying in my beard."

But he said as I began to think of Jesus, a mental image of Jesus as I jogged came to me and I realized, I realized that I was not the first man to have spit drying in his beard. That's what I'm talking about. And he says when I realized what Jesus did for me, when I saw spit drying in his beard, the anger and the hate and the rage went away. Somehow, dear friends, you and I can look back and see Calvary and see Jesus and every dysfunctional emotion that you and I experience today, he experienced it first.

Listen again to the words that you just read. "Therefore, since we have not a great high priest," this is not an ivory tower Jesus, "a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us firmly hold to our faith. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, tempted in every way," every angry feeling you have, he had it. Every emotion of sadness that you have, he had it. Somehow you have to look back. If I ever get over what I need to get over, I have to see Jesus experiencing it for me and then I can be healed and I can get over.

Now in your number one, write the word down, write the word "unaccepted." The feeling, the emotion of unacceptance is a very humiliating, insulting, demeaning thing. Some of us today have been in places or maybe right now are in situations where we feel unaccepted. It takes away one's sense of self and dignity. Some today you may be unaccepted by your peers, you may be unaccepted where you work, at your job. You may be unaccepted by a spouse.

Now think about, I'm talking now to a particular group and when I get to the fourth one, I'll perhaps have covered all of us. But how many times I have sat in my office with a man or a woman with tears and telling me that my husband has had an extramarital affair. He finds me unacceptable today. He's rejecting me for someone else. A man has said something very similar.

I think of this minister's wife. The minister is a full-time professional minister and tears welled up in her eyes as she told me that her father never accepted her. She grew up in a household where she was never accepted by her father, her father is still living, but she said he has never in all of my life can I ever remember him ever touching me, hugging me or saying that he loves me. And she said every time I talk to him on the phone, I get ready to hang up and I'll say, "Dad, I love you," and she craves, she yearns to hear that man say, "Daughter, I love you," but he won't do it.

And her heart is broken. There are many ways to feel unaccepted, to be rejected. Some of you thought you were going to get a promotion and somebody else got the promotion. You were rejected, they were accepted, you were not accepted. Somehow, friends, in order to get and move beyond that, somehow without bitterness coming into our hearts, we have to look back to Calvary and see Jesus unaccepted. He was rejected, he was not accepted.

The scripture says Jesus was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own, listen, his own did not receive him. They used him as a reject. They crucified him. And somehow in order for me to move beyond this feeling of being unaccepted, I must see Jesus, the one that they cried out, "Crucify him! Crucify him! We prefer Barabbas! We don't want him! He's unacceptable! We'll take the thief and the robber!"

Jesus, listen to what the scripture says in Isaiah 53, "He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him, he was despised and we esteemed him not." Now friends, if you ever move beyond, whether it be in a marital situation, an employment situation, a home situation or whatever situation it is, if you feel unaccepted, the only way you'll find healing for that emotion is to look upon him who accepted and bore unacceptance first. We must fix our eyes on Jesus.

Okay, now number two write down "insecurity." There are some people who feel insecure for a variety of reasons and do you know there are some people who have insecure feelings and there's no reason at all to feel insecure, and yet that is a dread emotion that comes over people from time to time, that feeling of insecurity. A very uncomfortable feeling, it's a feeling of feeling very vulnerable, there's no foundation, there's no protection, you're on your own.

Now many elderly people feel insecure. They just feel insecure, they've lost maybe their health or they're losing their strength, they sometimes can't pay their bills now and take care of the paperwork and they have to get somebody else to do that for them. I know there are people, elderly people now they can't use their car anymore, they've just lost their independence and it's a time in many of their lives of feeling very insecure.

Single people sometimes feel very insecure, particularly single parents because the single parent doesn't have another person there to consult with, to help bring in income, to help discipline the children, they're just all on their own. Feelings of insecurity. People have felt insecure when they've lost a job. How many of times I've talked with a young couple, I'm thinking of a young couple, I just can't place them at the moment, but they came and they said to me, "You know, we just bought this house and we bought a new car and everything is going well, we have more than enough money to pay everything," and little did I know without any announcement or preparation, I walked in one morning and I got riffed.

Now what's going to happen to my house, my wife, my children? Feelings of insecurity, they come. The only way to move beyond that, we have to see Jesus the son of God. On one occasion he said to one young man that wanted to follow him, Jesus very clearly and I want you to know something, Jesus makes his will very known. People say, "Oh, if I only knew what he wants me to do." Friend, you and I can know. He doesn't speak in ambiguity, he speaks very clearly.

Jesus said to that young man, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I the son of man, I don't have a place to lay my head. You want to follow me? You want to follow me?" When he died on the cross, he had only one earthly possession and that was a seamless robe. Now you tell me about your poverty and I'll tell you about his poverty. See, you and I have to see Jesus. Jesus came and he identified with every man and every woman and with every emotion that any man, any woman or any teenager or child will have and he identified. Now you and I have to identify with him or, listen, or your healing will not come for that dysfunctional emotion that you have, that defeat that is going on inside you.

Now on number three, write down the word "alone." There are people who feel so alone and yet there are people all around us and we are alone and no one to share our sorrows with, who can understand the depths of our anguish, to be a friend or a companion to call upon, alone. How do I get over aloneness? How do you move beyond that feeling that you've had for months or for years?

Well, you have to see Jesus. You see, in your mind you have to go all the way back to Gethsemane and you have to hear him speak to the disciples, "What, could you not watch with me one hour? I'm alone with the sins of the world. I'm alone to drink the cup of sin to bring about salvation." And he needed the company of Peter, James and John. The humanity of Christ was coming forth in need of companionship and he was alone.

The scripture says the shepherd was smitten and the sheep scattered. On the cross, they all forsook him and fled. Even before the cross, Peter denied him. You see what I'm trying to say? He knows that feeling. He knows that feeling. He became so alone. Aloneness is like a darkness that comes over a person and it somehow it seems to seep into our very inmost being and begins to cloud our judgment until the rays of happiness are gone and we can't laugh anymore, we can't find any joy.

Jesus went through aloneness, one degree, second degree, third degree, until a darkness eventually was seen, the darkness of his soul entered and came over the earth, and it became so dark and he felt so alone until he cried out, "My God, my God, even you forsook me." You don't have to be alone with your aloneness today. Jesus knows the feeling. He knows the feeling and when you start talking to him about aloneness, he can come to you, he can bless you, he's been there over and over again. Aloneness.

Okay, put the next one down. Number four I want you to write down the word "burden." Living under pressure, living with stress, carrying so many responsibilities and concerns. You lament and say things or at least think thoughts, "Oh, if I could only get out from under this." What is it that you need to get out from under? What is it that's pressing you down and just pressing the very life and joy out of you?

Well, in order to get out from under it, you have to have somebody to help you carry it and that's Jesus. Jesus was carrying the cross and he fell beneath the burden. The stress was too much. He had been up all night. He'd gone through two trials, a civil trial and a religious trial. Peter had denied him, everybody had forsaken him and fled. The Roman soldiers took a whip and put 39 lashes on his back.

Oh yes, he could have called for heaven and 10,000 angels would have come, but he didn't. Why didn't he do that? He wanted to feel what you feel so that when you pray, you will identify with his feelings and he can identify with your feelings and bring healing and wholeness to your very soul, to your very emotion, to your very personality. This is why.

He fell beneath the load and there was the man of Cyrene who got under that crossbeam and lifted it for him. He wouldn't call upon divine powers. Why wouldn't he call upon divine powers? He wanted to feel what humans feel so that when humans pray, he knows what you're praying about. So now we're going to come to the altar. And the ushers and deacons are going to be here to help you and you're going to take the wafer and you're going to take the fruit of the vine. And I want you to do something when you do that.

When you come to kneel at the altar, you make your altar back at your seat, I want you to think of one of these emotions that I've mentioned. The burden and the stress, the aloneness, the insecurity, whatever. If I didn't mention one, you think about it and if you will think back, I want you to in your soul, just close your eyes to everything that is around you, but in your soul, see Jesus going through it for you.

And when you see him, you will be able to identify with him, he will be able to identify with you. This is what he said. He said, "Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." You have to get the picture of two ox, one of them with the yoke and the other with the yoke. Jesus is saying, "You don't have to take both of those and try to carry yourself through life. I'm going to get in harness with you."

And he said, "I'm going to carry the biggest load. Now you're going to have some tension and there's going to be some things that's going to be necessary for you to live and function properly and move forward with your life, but I'm going to carry my share plus most of your share." And somehow today if you're burdened, I want you to see Jesus getting in the yoke with you and starting to walk with you and feeling it and carrying it and you will feel the lightness come.

When you come to the altar today, I want you to think of whatever emotion you're experiencing and then close your eyes, get a vision of Jesus, a mental vision of Jesus. Now I'm talking about using your imagination. This is a gift that God has given to you. The scripture tells us in the word of God, it says in Psalm 139, verse 14, "I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

But there's a part that God has made in you and in me that is atrophying and that's the eye of faith. We read things about Jesus, but we don't see it happening. Today I want you to see it happening to him. Whatever's happening to you, I want you to see it happening to him. And everybody says amen. Amen.

Guest (Male): Whatever you're carrying today, rejection, insecurity, aloneness, stress, or another burden, Jesus understands. He experienced the depths of human suffering so that we could look to him and know that we are never alone.

Visit thehealingword.com for more biblical encouragement and to share your prayer request with us. Next time Pastor Morris continues this teaching by showing us how faith looks beyond what our natural eyes can see in "Seeing with Spiritual Eyes."