It is easier to understand the Beatitudes if you understand the writings of the apostle John. John constantly dealt with spiritual perception, speaking in mystical terms of those who see God and those who do not see God. We understand more clearly what John was talking about when we read in Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In effect, John turned this Beatitude around when he wrote that if a man is living in sin, he has not seen God or known Him (I John 3:6).
Our spiritual perception is related to our focus on God and the purity of heart with which we seek the face of God. If we are focused on God, without question the processes of purification are going on in our lives. John spoke about those who have the hope of seeing Him: And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. I John 3:3. We read in Hebrews 12:14 that without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. There will be no spiritual perception of God and of the great things to come without a purity and a preparation of heart to see them.
A man may think that he knows all about walking with God and that all of it has been revealed to him. However, if he is walking in sin, there is deception in him somewhere. He may claim that he understands it, but the real knowledge of the Lord comes to those who continually open their hearts to the purifying work of the Lord. God does a deep work in them. They go through many tests and trials, not to prevail over circumstances, but to prevail over the darkness of their own hearts. They constantly focus upon the Lord, because they know that the breakthrough to see Him as He is will come only to those who are focused upon Him and have been transformed from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (II Corinthians 3:18). With each dealing, the Lord is more real to them. They are changing; they are reaching in to the purifying work of the Lord. Ultimately will come the breakthrough when they shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is (I John 3:2).
Matthew 6:22–23 further expounds this truth: “The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore 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 therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” This Scripture points out very clearly that there will have to be correction in your sight. You must be focused on the Lord.
Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talked about focus. He said that no man can serve two masters—he must be focused very much on the Lord (Matthew 6:24). If you are not focused on the Lord, you will not be able to see things as you should see them. This realization emphasizes the fact that your eye is not the factor that determines what you see. Your heart determines what you see. Weigh this truth carefully. What you see with your eye is not the total of what you see. If deception is in your heart, you will see with deception. If God is in your heart, you will see God in a situation. What you see with your eye is greatly affected by the focus of your heart.
While the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, they did not see God in their midst; therefore, they saw the circumstances as being evil. But Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27). Because his heart was set on God, he could endure; he could go through anything, for his heart could see the Lord in it. There is a simple solution for discouragement: fix your eyes on the Lord. You have heard this from the time you first became a Christian. If your eye is constantly focused on the Lord, you will never be discouraged, you will never be defeated, and you will never be open to deception to any extent. Determine that you are going to see only the Lord.
There are those in the Body of Christ who are examples for all of us. It seems as if they cannot be upset. They may have problems all around them, yet they keep right on serving the Lord and ministering to others in the Body with a great deal of faith. No matter what happens, they do not complain or speak a discouraging word about anyone. Sometimes it seems as if they are too naive to know what is going on, but they do. They are so focused on the Lord, and they so love Him, that they can see into every situation with a clarity that many other people do not have.
It is possible for your eyes to play tricks on you. Imagine that you are holding one of your troubles in your hand. Concentrate on it, and it will become a paper dragon before your eyes. It will grow bigger and bigger and bigger until you want to run, thinking it will devour you. Any one of your problems could affect you that way. How can you shrink your problems down? Your paper dragons will blow away if you keep your eyes on the Lord.
When Moses sent the twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan, ten of them brought back an evil report. Although the giants were actually not that much bigger than the Israelites, the ten declared that in their own sight they were like grasshoppers before the giants of the land. Joshua and Caleb, however, did not fear the giants because they were completely focused on the Lord. The Lord was so great to them that everything else shrank proportionately in their sight (Numbers 13).
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; but woe to those who are focused on anything else but God. The impurities of their own hearts distort their vision. Remember that if you are not focusing on the Lord, you are not being purified. When Moses went up on the mountain to meet the Lord, he had one cry, “Show me Thy glory” (Exodus 33:18). He came down glowing with it. His face was shining like the sun, but he was not aware of the amazing transformation that had taken place (Exodus 34:29). Paul, speaking of these things, said that we are changed from glory to glory as we focus on the Lord. The veil is taken away, and we are continually exposed to God (II Corinthians 3:16–18).
A man who is self-righteous has not had a revelation of the Lord. He has produced his righteousness himself. He is so inwardly focused that he has produced a counterfeit righteousness, a very poor facsimile of true righteousness. The true righteousness from God comes to a man who seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). Because he is focused on the Lord and is seeking the righteousness of God, a pure righteousness—not a self-righteousness—comes forth in him. The man who is being purified perceives God; he constantly reaches in to see Him. He sees Him on whatever plane God can be revealed to his heart, and he goes on from glory to glory, reaching up into it. Unless you are focused on God, you are not being purified in your life.
It is not enough to listen to sermons. You can listen to sermons and not hear them. You can look at God’s moving and not see it. It is the focus of your heart that determines whether or not your ears hear and your eyes see what God is doing. The people who really receive something from the Word are focused on the Lord; they come to church to see the Lord and to worship Him, and they take home a marvelous blessing. The people who come to the house of the Lord and focus on themselves and their circumstances, or on the problems and needs of others, do not receive anything from God.
Unless the focus of your heart is right, you do not hear, you do not see, and you do not perceive. Paul quoted the prophet Isaiah who said, concerning his people, “Hearing they would hear, and not understand; seeing they would see, and not perceive, lest they should turn and be converted and God would heal them” (Acts 28:26). You cannot move into something that you are not focused upon in your own heart. No one but you can make walking with God real to your own heart. If you focus on other things, you will have problems in seeing God in what He is setting before you.
Perhaps you were very much aware of God when you first began to walk with Him, but now you are more aware of problems and circumstances. It is easy to fall into that state. Moses kept his focus on the Lord through years in the wilderness, but he finally failed when he became overwhelmed with the rebellion of the people around him. One day they murmured against him because there was no water to drink. Angered that after all those years the people still had the same old problems, Moses picked up his rod and struck the rock. God had told him this time to speak to the rock, but he struck it as he had the first time. Then God reproved him for not sanctifying Him before the people’s eyes (Numbers 20:1–12). In that instance, Moses was not looking to the Lord. His heart was focused upon the rebellious people, and so he failed. Every leader of God’s people, everyone in authority, should heed this word: focus continually on God. This is the issue upon which a man will either stand or fall.
A ministry may feel that he must keep his eyes on the people. However, he can so focus on the people and feel the pulse of what they are doing that he finds himself losing out with God as Moses did. Moses became discouraged another time when he was weighed down with too many responsibilities. Instead of praying, “O God, show me Thy glory,” he asked God to do him a favor and kill him. His reaction was that of a man absorbed with his problems, absorbed with his ministry, and absorbed with all that he had to do. You probably recall that God remedied the situation by putting the same Spirit that was on Moses upon seventy elders who then carried the burden with him (Numbers 11).
A leader can reach the state where he wants God to kill him, not because of sin or a lack of reality or a lack of wisdom, but because the load of responsibility is so great. It can be devastating. When it seems as if he never has enough time and his responsibilities seem to mushroom beyond what he can manage, it is a sure sign that it is time to be alone with the Lord. Otherwise, he will remain too focused on the passing scene.
Those who work hard and carry the labors of the Lord must be careful not to become so busy that they suddenly lose out with God. They can develop many different complexes by concentrating and focusing so much on doing something for God that they lose their focus on Him. Do not fall into the old ways of those who think they must burn themselves out working for the Lord. He does not need anyone to work for Him. He needs people so in tune with Him that He works through them.
Never lose the vision of what you must do. Do not focus on projects; focus on building the Kingdom. Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness—the focus that belongs to the pure in heart. If you see God, then you can do His works in His name. Where there are problems and difficulties, believe that every one of them will straighten out; but believe also for a renewed vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. Break through to a new focus of heart on the Lord, and you will have every answer you need.
If you are not focused on God, you will not be objectively compassionate toward your brother in his need. If you are not focused on the Lord, you will not be in tune with God’s revelation for your brother’s life. No matter how much you try to love your brother, you will have a problem if you see only his needs. If you are focused on God, you can be in tune with what God has for your brother. You do not need to have a revelation of his problems. You have enough problems of your own, so why should you look at your brother’s? If you are in tune with the Lord you will know the will of God for your brother, and you can speak it to him.
A revelation about the perfect will of God for your brother is better than the sharpest perception of his problem. When you see him, look for a revelation from God about him; do not look to see his problems. His problems will slowly straighten out because he will outgrow them. Do you have the wisdom to look at a man and see where he is on the scale, compared to where you think he ought to be? He is not what he was, but maybe he is not what he should be either. Do you think he is moving fast enough? When you start analyzing your brother like that, looking for faults, you will not get anywhere. But when you are focused on the Lord and you look at your brother, God will whisper in your ear what He has called him to be.
Do not cease to have faith for one another—faith that is based upon a continuous, fresh revelation. Without revelation, you can easily give up on a man. When God brings perception in the heart of a pastor to see other men in the light of the will of God for them, He enables him to have faith for those that He brings under his hand. If the pastor can see what God wants in a man, he will not become discouraged. Ask the Lord to open your heart to see your brother in the light of the will of God. Desire to see what God wants for him.
Unless you are focused on God, you will be open to temptation. Eve was tempted when she looked at the fruit and saw that it was pleasant to the eye and good for food. She was lured into disobeying God as she focused upon it. Suppose you want to overcome the lust of the flesh or discouragement or something else in your spirit that is wrong. The first step is to forget about what is wrong. Once you are distracted, and you focus no longer on your need, but on the Lord instead, you will find your own need met.
Willpower does not get the job done. The man who goes off to a quiet place to contemplate victory over the flesh gets nowhere. Certain ancient religious sects concentrated on suppressing the flesh, but such efforts eventually resulted in some of the most audacious sex crimes of history. Whatever you focus on will grow into a big dragon that will consume you. Do not focus on the flesh; focus on the Lord. Perhaps a certain habit or weakness has plagued you again and again. But as you focus on the Lord, you will find the pattern changing; you will be overwhelmed by the problem less and less. As time passes, you will be less distracted, and the Lord will become greater to your heart.
If you want a real battle, study all the books and sermons you can find about overcoming. You will be so focused on overcoming that you will fail. The way to overcome is to look to the Lord and be changed from glory to glory. Find some books and sermons that emphasize the Lordship of Jesus Christ and glorify Him. As you focus on the fact that He is going to be the Lord ruling in the Kingdom, you will he overwhelmed thinking about that. One day you will realize that it has been a long time since you have been bothered by your old problem. The problems of the flesh do not overcome those who focus on the Lord. It is on the outskirts of the camp, where people murmur against each other and focus on each other, that people stumble.
Unless you are focused on the Lord, you can be open to a great deal of discouragement. Both deception and discouragement come from a focus on something else besides the Lord. When a man is focused on the Lord, all kinds of problems may surround him, yet he still rejoices.
If you feel sorry for yourself, it is because your focus is within. If you are going through testings, do not cry; rejoice! Keep your focus on the Lord. When you focus on the persecution, you begin to fight back. You do not have to fight back; just rejoice in the Lord. Keep focused on the Lord and believe that everything is coming along just right. Walking with God in the Spirit today is the greatest expression that He has brought to the Church in hundreds of years. The pure Word of the Lord is coming in this hour, and it is unfolding the truths of the Kingdom as never before. Set the focus of your heart upon the truths that God is speaking.
If you are in the midst of problems, forget them! Determine not to be open to deception or discouragement; keep your eyes on the Lord. Walk together with the ministries that God is bringing forth. If you look upon your brother as being just a man rather than a ministry, you may stumble. The man and the ministry are one and the same. Accept one another, striving for more than merely to tolerate one another; strive and labor to see one another presented perfect in Christ Jesus. This is a high goal.
You cannot believe in perfection as long as you are analyzing the progress of those who are striving for perfection. You can only believe in perfection coming forth in your own life when you focus on Him who is perfect, and you believe that by one sacrifice He has forever perfected those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). You do not obtain that faith by looking at one another or by looking in the mirror. You obtain that faith by looking at the Lord and believing that He made the perfect sacrifice. If you look to Him, it will happen to you. Expect the Lord Himself to happen to you.
Unless you are focused on God, you will walk in a kind of deception in which you will not be conscious of your own need in the correct way. When you focus on your need only, it will overwhelm you. But when you are focused on the Lord, then you become aware of your need in such a way that you can do something about it. When you are focused on the Lord, you also become aware of your brother’s need in such a way that you believe to see the positive revelation of the will of God for him.
If you are focused on the Lord, your continuous awareness of Him produces a continuous repentance in your own spirit. The man who is proud and arrogant is not focused on God. If a man is focused on God, he is humble and repentant. He is not arrogant, because in the light of God his need is reflected back to him. When he sees the penetrating analysis of his own need, he cannot walk in pride.
Unless we are focused on God, we become self-righteous, and we see ourselves with a deceived heart. There is a peril in not being focused on God, but there is a blessing in being focused on Him. The self-righteous see only themselves, because that is where their focus is. They always have a deceived heart. Those who see God have a pure vision of themselves. We cannot see God unless we see ourselves correctly. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Purity gives us perception. Closely related to it is this Beatitude: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Matthew 5:6. These Scriptures are expounded in Matthew 6:33: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” Consider these verses from a new viewpoint. Unless the Kingdom of God and His righteousness have the priority in your life, you will never have His righteousness. If your interest is divided in the least, if you are seeking to serve two masters, you are in trouble. That is why the Lord told His disciples to sell what they had and lay up treasures in heaven (Luke 12:33).
If you can shift the treasure of your heart so that the whole focus of your life is upon His righteousness and His Kingdom, you will attain it. You will be satisfied. But if you are interested in the Kingdom and also in many other fascinating hobbies and pursuits, you may become too busy to come to church, too busy to seek and attain the righteousness of God. You may have enough to get by, but until the pursuit of His righteousness is absolutely your first focus, you will never be filled with it. Righteousness must have priority, or it will not happen in your life.
You can receive gratification and satisfaction from doing the work of the Lord. Yet if it gives you a feeling of self-importance, you will never attain the righteousness that you should attain from following God. If you feel that you are the only one who can do the work you are doing, the only one who can be counted on as being faithful to do it, then your focus is not on the Lord’s righteousness and you are not hungering after Him. Then God will work it out so that someone who does not appreciate what you are doing will accuse you of doing it wrong. Maybe you are really doing it right; but if you have a bad reaction, you are still doing it wrong—even if the job is perfect. You are not doing the job unto man, but unto the Lord. What comes back to you out of it is not the issue. You do not serve God for what you hope to get out of it.
Do you want everyone to appreciate you? Do you want God to appreciate what you are doing? Nehemiah was like that. He built the wall, but we do not read about God meeting his heart very much. Why not? Because he was always calling upon God to remember how righteous his ways were. That is not how God meets a man’s heart. What you accomplish is incidental to seeking His righteousness. You walk with God, not out of a sense of vainglory, but because God has a plan for you and you want to be well-pleasing unto Him. All your efforts are leading somewhere. It is true that you want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Nevertheless, deep within you are to seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness. If you do not pursue righteousness, you will never find it. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be satisfied; but if the hungers of this life equal, rival, or exceed that hunger for righteousness, you will never attain the promise.
Matthew 6:25 warns you not to be anxious for your life—what you will eat, what you will drink, or what you will wear. Every pursuit of life is hinted at in this chapter, but the one thing you must do is to seek for His righteousness. Then all the other things you need will he added to you. God is not adverse to all these other things being added to you. He is not telling you that if you dare to want anything else, He will not bless you. He has simply given you a law whereby if you seek first His righteousness, if you are really in tune with Him in pursuing it, He will give you more than righteousness alone. He will add everything else to you. Psalm 92:12 says, The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree.
Keep your eyes perfectly on the Lord. A wandering gaze is dangerous to your survival. Keep your eyes upon Him, even if people accuse you of living in a dream world and of being ignorant of the problems. You had better not focus on problems very much. If your focus remains on the Lord, you can receive a revelation knowledge from Him that solves the problems. To help others with their problems, you do not need to get into the mud with them; you do not have to stop and analyze their problems. All you need to do is to give them the Word of the Lord that brings revelation to their hearts. If you give them a revelation of their destiny in the Lord, and if they believe it and focus on the Lord, many of their problems will be solved. God sometimes leads us to deal with problems because they help us to reestablish the right focus.
Many of your problems will be solved if you fix your heart on the Lord and determine to see the Lord. David, going through all of his problems, said, I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Psalm 16:8. The apostle Peter moved in wonderful faith when, in the midst of boisterous and contrary winds, he said, “Lord, bid me to walk on the water.” He jumped right over the side of the boat and walked on the water; but when he started looking at the waves, he began to sink, and his cry was, “Lord, save me!”
Where is your focus? Do you feel as if you are getting a little wet? If you have been sinking and praying, “Lord, save me; I think I am going to lose out,” it is your fault. You did not start out that way. Get your focus back on the Lord. Your survival depends upon fixing your heart upon the Lord. Everything can be renewed. Just lift your eyes to the Lord afresh. Instead of struggling to get on top of your problems, leapfrog over them. Set your eyes on the Lord, wait upon Him, renew your strength, and mount up with wings as an eagle (Isaiah 40:31).
The man who stumbles is the man who looks where he is going. The man who walks without stumbling is the man who always has his gaze set upon the Lord. He endures because he has a sustaining revelation of Jesus Christ. After many troubles, the apostle Paul stood before King Agrippa and told about his conversion and the years of ministry that had followed. He told about his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. It was not just something that he remembered as an experience; it was a revelation that sustained him. Because Christ was real to him, he testified, Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Acts 26:19. In II Timothy 4:7 he said, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. If we were to ask him how he did it, he would probably tell us, as he did three times in the book of Acts, how he saw the Lord and how the vision remained real to him. He was sustained by that revelation.
Every time you waver, it is because you are taking your eyes off the vision of Him. The vision should be growing stronger, not dimmer. If you look back to an experience, feeling that it was the outstanding event in your life and that your vision of the Lord has dimmed since then, something is wrong. You should be seeking an open vision and revelation of God that is greater and more real today than ever before.
We are sustained by the Lord; therefore, we need to turn our eyes constantly toward Him. Keep your eyes wholly upon the Lord, and the other needs will be met. In doing so you are not ignoring problems; you are saying, in effect, “There are no problems; there is just one answer—He is the answer to everything.” You will be sustained by a revelation of Him. One day you will say, like Paul, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Everything that He revealed Himself to be to me inspired a faithfulness in me. I did not stop walking with God, because I kept my eye upon Him; I believed His Word and kept my focus upon it. I finished the course, I kept the faith, I never took my eyes off the revelation of the Lord.”
The focus on the Lord must be a determined focus, a way of life. When you determine where your focus will be, then your faith looses you into it. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that you will walk without wavering. Keep your eyes on the Lord. God reveals Himself to those who are determined to see Him. They have a burning hope that leads them to purify themselves and make themselves ready.