Being a Magnifying Glass in a Nearsighted World

                We live in a nearsighted world. Meaning, in our human nature we only see and care about what is right in front of us. The believers need to be up front and show God to this world.

                The world has its ideas that it tries to get people to focus on. It can be any form of anything, food & drink, sports, arts & media, people, relationships, social networking.  Those things aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re used by the world to distract us from what we need to focus on.

                The biggest problem with these distractions is that they make us focus on us, not on God or others like we should. The world tells us to look inward at what we want. But God is telling us to look to Him for sustenance in our lives.

                Often we are compared to lighthouses, guiding ships so that they don’t shatter themselves on the rocks. But, when you think about it, if we’re a light house that makes us the reference point for others to adjust their lives to what we are showing them. The gaze of others is focused on us and not on God, where it should be focused.

                Psalm 34:3 “O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.” We are not called to be the object of the gaze of others. Rather, we are to be a magnifying glass to the glory of God the Father. When people look at our lives, they should see God so much bigger through us.

                When you put something in front of a magnifying glass it gets bigger and, if it’s a good magnifying glass it get’s clearer and more detailed; you begin to see things in an object that you couldn’t see before. Likewise, our lives when people look and interact with us, they should see and learn things about God that they had never seen before. Not that we are achieving god status, but that our lives are so filled with Him and His word that people can’t help but notice God’s influence in our lives.

                What happens when the sun shines through a magnifying glass? I’m not going to go into the scientific reasons why it burns things. But when you are living for God so that people can see Him through you then that means He can also begin to use you to get through to other people. If we are open God can use us as tools to affect others.

                A magnifying glass is made of glass, thus, it is transparent. We must be transparent too. If there I something distorting the view of the magnifying glass you should clean the magnifying glass. How is this accomplished? It is accomplished through continual reading of the scripture and prayerful “alone time” with God. Having transparency in our lives is a good thing. Transparency is holding nothing back so that the world can see Christ’s perfection working in our lives to perfect us. I like to call it legitimacy, the state of being legitimate. D. L. Moody said "Character is what you are in the dark."   He was saying that who you really are is what you do say and think about when no one else is around. The act of being legitimate is just that, being the same God-fearing, God-honoring person when you’re at home in your bedroom or when you’re out in public where you can be seen. We shouldn’t have to put on a face to go out into the world to make us look better. We shouldn’t feel like we need to turn up our level of Christianity, we should be legitimate so that when we go out we are just as Godly just as Christ-like out in the world as we are in the privacy of our homes.

                I’m not saying that I’m perfect, I do have a tendency to put on a face in public, but this is something that is a continual work that needs to be done. But, we can’t do it on our own; we need the loving hand of God to work in our lives to clean the glass to wipe away any filth that reduces the transparency of our lives. When we let Him work He does amazing things, let Him clean your magnifying glass.







If you want to contact me directly, the address I use for this blog is: givmejesus@gmail.com