“To You I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens! Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until He is gracious to us. Be gracious to us, O Lord, be gracious to us, for we are greatly filled with contempt” (Psalm 123:1-3).

Psalm 123

The complexity and capacity of the human eye is mind-boggling! The retina of your eye has 10 million cells, tiny machines unmatched by any ever built by man. Every thousandth of a second, each of those cells performs 500 nonlinear differential equations 100 times each! Talk about a calculus assignment! That’s why Darwin himself said, in his renowned book On the Origin of Species, “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

The eye controls the mind like a steering wheel controlling the position of a car. Our eyes are our guide. They set the course of our thinking and our activities. They also print pictures into our minds that we never forget. As they bring pictures into the mind (good or bad), the brain produces epinephrine, which prints the picture into the memory like a face carved into Mount Rushmore. That’s why porn is so lethal. I’ll bet that’s why focusing on God is so preservative.

The whole human eye contains about 100 million cells, each with the capacity of one 10 million bytes of information per second (1.25 megabytes). The amount of care, caution, and respect a Christ-follower should give to the direction and point of focus of his eyes, in terms of the thoughts he wants to produce and the words and actions by which he lives, is monumental. That’s why Jesus taught His followers, in His famous Sermon on the Mount, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23).

Because Jesus designed and constructed the eye “from the beginning of creation,” He is no doubt the greatest authority on this profound word of caution.

• Colossians 3:1-2 – “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”
  • What does it mean to “set your mind”?

• Psalm 119:18 – “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law.”
  • What is the psalmist petitioning God for?
  • How does this inspire your Bible reading?

• Proverbs 4:25 – “Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.”
• Psalm 119:37 – “Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity, and revive me in Your ways.”
  • How do these passages speak to you?

• Ephesians 1:18 – “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
• Philippians 4:8 – “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
  • What are “the eyes of your heart”?
  • According to Philippians 4:8, where should “the eyes of your heart” be focused?

• 1 John 2:16 – “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”
  • What is this verse communicating to you?

• Job 31:1 – “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”
  • What would it mean in your daily life if you made such a covenant with your eyes?

John 13:15 – “For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.”

From today’s scripture, how does THE Shepherd inspire you to shepherd your flock?

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18).

Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication