Mareh: Seeing Visions of God 1

Every believer can see spiritually

The Spiritual eyes and ears of every believer are open

The Spirit of God in us does not sleep

When you hear the expression “God opened my eyes” in scripture; it means “God took my attention to a particular or specific issue he wanted me to focus on at the time and not that I was blind before and at that moment God opened my eyes so that I could see”

It is like calling the attention of your child to something on TV or in the Kitchen

The moment you call the attention of the child or staff or friend to that thing, you are opening the person’s eyes or enlightening the person about that particular thing

You are not making them see because they are blind

You are bringing a particular issue or event into focus for them

The issue here is, How have you connected to your inner man so that you can see what he sees and know what he knows?

The expression, “Let him that has an ear hear what the Spirit is saying” is found in the Book of Revelations

This does not mean some people do not have ears, it means many with ears are not attuned to the expressions of the Spirit

Those who have the capacity to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying must then hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church

Having clarity in the place of vision is heavily dependent on the believer being able to discern what he or she is seeing or hearing and making the right decisions off that information

You need to know the word of God and How God speaks

God speaks in a certain manner

He does not speak evil, neither does his word cause you to become fearful, panicky, anxious, or sweaty

His words do not make you uncomfortable or give you a headache

How you feel in your body after hearing from God is not how you feel after hearing from any man or woman or even yourself

Some will see something and they will become scared

God didn’t speak to them

The Holy Spirit creates an atmosphere of love and confidence in those who hear from God

No matter what they hear or how dire it may seem, God speaks as one who knows the end from the beginning

Not as one who is anxious about the end of a matter

This confidence is evident in everyone who is of God and who hears from God

Many believers ask why they cannot see clearly

Many of us listen to hours of tapes from many men of God but do not even attempt to listen to God or hear God speak for ourselves

Yet the scriptures are very clear, Let God be true and every man a liar!

You can hear God through men but the one thing that will be unshakable and undistorted is for you to hear God for yourself

If what you are hearing is not founded in the word of God, it is not of God

Jesus is God – If you don’t see this or believe this you will never have a clear vision of reality

Yet, Jesus never said in the scriptures that, “I am God!”

There are verses in the scriptures where he alluded to being God or the son of God but He never said word for word that He is God

If you don’t see him as God then you will never be able to appropriate to Him or ascribe to him the glory due to His name or see Him truly as he is and therefore whatever you see will not be clear

I give you an example

I had a friend called Rotimi while I was living in Ibadan, we played football together for many years

He attended Bashorun High School or St. Patrick while I atended Loyola College Ibadan

We were friends, football buddies and we spoke once or twice

We knew each other by sight but we were not the kind of friends that hung out together

Then we parted ways as we grew older

I went to the University of Ibadan, while he went to LAUTECH

One day I went to LAUTECH to visit a friend and somehow I saw this guy sitting opposite me in a restaurant at their student union area

I recognized him from afar, and took a sheet of paper, rolled it into a ball, and threw it at him mildly just to get his attention

As soon as I did this, I was mobbed by about 10-15 guys

They came from all over

WOW!

I Didn’t know he had been elected as the Student Union President of His school

He had his entourage and security personnel all about

I just saw him as an old football buddy

But he was no longer that person

Thank God he recognized me and told them to leave me be, else I would have been beaten to a pulp that day simply because my vision of him was distorted

If you don’t see someone in the right light, you cannot benefit from them the right way

I know the challenge familiarity causes in some families

A man becomes a prophet of God and outsiders are benefitting from his grace but members of his household couldn’t see him in the right light or benefit from him in the right way

This also happened to Jesus when he visited Nazareth

The Bible says he couldn’t do much for them because they didn’t believe in him

They didn’t believe in him because they didn’t see him as they ought to

For you to see right, you must have a clear understanding of what the truth is and what it is not

Many will see a vision and they will be confused as to who spoke to them

They will say the scriptures say angels of darkness can appear as angels of light but they will ignore the fact that seeing angels gives you a certain confidence, witness, and reassurance in your spirit that seeing any other entity does not give you

1 Samuel 16: 5 Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.”

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The Lord has not chosen this one either.” 9 Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the Lord chosen this one.” 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”

“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”

Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”

12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”

13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah.

Samuel wasn’t just a Prophet (Hozeh), he was a Roeh, A seer!

He saw ELIAB and called him the anointed of the Lord, he assumed the person he was seeing was the one God sent him to anoint based on his previous conversation with God about the kingship situation in Israel

We all fall for this and thus misinterpret or misread God’s instructions to us

This then distorts our vision

God had told Samuel that he repented that he made Saul king, Samuel was mourning, but God told him to stop mourning and go to the House of Jesse with anointing oil to choose a new King

Samuel obeyed

Then Samuel saw Eliab and the other sons of Jesse and he convinced himself out of eagerness and assumption that the ones he saw were the King God had chosen

Meanwhile, the chosen of the Lord was not even at home at that time

If God did not intervene on time, Samuel would have anointed the wrong person and he would be claiming he did it by the instruction of God

Assumption is a distorter of clear vision in the life of a believer

A brother told the Lord in the place of prayer that the lady who bought him a Bible surely would be his wife

On his birthday, a lady gave him a Bible and he immediately assumed God had brought him a wife

They got into a relationship

It was the mother of all nightmares for him

He claimed he heard from God based on his previous prayer but he assumed and he was wrong

God told a sister he would be bringing her husband into her life on a certain day by prophecy

She was working as an IT student in the Post graduate department of a University

That day she took time to dress and look her best

She got to work and a total of 17 guys dropped their cards with her/took her phone number

One came in, looked at her, and said “You are my wife”

He was the least qualified, he was 24 years old, a student of Agricultural Economics

Medical doctors, oil tycoons, military guys, etcetera who were better placed in life had given her their cards

None of them called her “Wife” and she wanted an older and more established person

The “Wife” thing was not even spiritual or special

Men say that all the time to a beautiful woman

It became a battle within her heart

Which is which and why didn’t God just keep it simple?

When she got home, God said to her

“He will come looking for you every day for the next month, then you will be assured

True to God’s word, he didn’t call

He kept coming to her office to walk her home every evening from that day

She married him two years later

A man searched for a job for three years to no avail

God told him to go to a particular location and work as a missionary

His wife and father both said, “No, God didn’t speak to you, you are just being impatient”

On the eve of the day he was to depart, he got a good job with an oil company

His wife said, “Can you see?”

His father said, “Didn’t I ask you to be patient?”

He took the job

It took him away from his father and wife

It took him away from God

He found himself in the Philippines with a strange woman

His entire life changed drastically, negatively when he took the job

His father began to pray that God would restore him

His wife packed her bags and left after two years

He lost his job

He came back home to nothing

Then he packed his bag and left for the mission field

Human Error, Opinion/influence can distort our sight

1 Samuel 9: 1

There was a Benjamite, a man of standing, whose name was Kish son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bekorath, the son of Aphiah of Benjamin. 2 Kish had a son named Saul, as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else.

This was what Samuel saw when he met Saul and this also influenced him in the assumption he made about Jesse’s children

Saul was picked for physical appearance and Samuel then used the same criteria that God used to pick Saul to judge in picking the sons of Jesse

Using Yesterday’s criteria to make spiritual decisions today distorts our vision of God

The primary reason why many cannot see is because they use yesterday’s access/revelation/access/criteria/means of revelation/means of deciding to make judgments today

If someone from a particular tribe or who looks a particular way or has a particular background breaks your heart, you tend to assume that anyone else who shares those same traits will be unreliable or unfaithful as a spouse

This is not a real-time revelation, this is from experience and it is usually not God’s desire

His word must come to us “In the moment” not stale words of yesterday or last week

The past also has a voice, it colors how you see things and for that reason, it programs how you see the future

Vision is not a matter of what I saw

It is a matter of seeing (In the present)

Job 33: 23

Yet if there is an angel at their side,

A messenger, one out of a thousand,

Sent to tell them how to be upright,

24 and he is gracious to that person and says to God,

‘Spare them from going down to the pit;

I have found a ransom for them—

For the believer the voice of God is ever present, an angel of God is ever present as a messenger who teaches us how to follow the instructions of the Lord and shows us how not to fall into error

Horoscopes are demonic, why do they seem right or correct? It is because there is an established pattern of behavior of certain people born in a certain period or with certain characteristics which the devil had documented based on the past and is using to predict the future

There is no one on earth that God does not speak to

Job 33: 14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;

16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction

When a man cannot see or perceive or discern the voice of God, it is not because God is not speaking, it is because he has not gained clarity of vision and understanding

Perception is also key in seeing the purpose and visions of God clearly

Someone who believes he is a sinner already believes he cannot see or hear God

So even if God came to such wearing a red tuxedo, he or she will miss it

People who entertain gossip have distorted vision because the words being shared in gossip presents a negative light of people and creates a negative image of them so that you already have a preconceived mindset about the person

The human mind functions off what is heard and then forms an opinion of what is seen

We see and form an opinion based on the information we have about things and people before we even see them

Someone started talking about a brother in fellowship in a negative light because their relationship didn’t work out, the person keeps talking about it to everyone who had an ear to hear

Soon, others began to come to me with complaints about the same brother

I knew it was because this one person had kept on colouring people’s opinions about this brother, this then distorted how the brother was seen by others and it also distorted how they received ministrations from him

Jesus said blessed are those who believe without seeing

John 20:29 29 Jesus said to him, [a]“Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

This works both ways

Some of us hold certain beliefs that have colored our sight, these beliefs then hinder us from seeing the perfect revelation of God to us

For you to believe something you have not seen, it means somebody spoke to you about it.l

Thomas was told about Jesus, he didn’t believe but he heard

Our “sight” is controlled by the people around us that feed us information

Pride also distorts visions, it gives the seer an over-bloated image of himself and therefore he cannot see things as he ought to

Fear also distorts our vision, it makes us magnify things that God has labeled nothing and diminish the Word of God

30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there were of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

The children of Israel didn't see through the lens of God’s word, they saw through the lens of their fears, and as a result, they saw a distorted vision of self

What is the information within you that you know will distort the truth of the word of God?

Run from people who will give you information to deliberately distort how you see a fellow believer or how you perceive any believer

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such thing.

-GSW-