18 Nov The View (Because What Gets Your Attention Gets You) Part 3
Jim Carey, the famous actor/comedian, moved from Canada to Hollywood many years ago. Upon arriving, he made out a check to himself from a big studio for ten million dollars. He would get that check out every day and look at it, believing that one day this would be the sum of money he would be paid per movie. Within five years, Jim Carey was not making ten million dollars per movie…he was making twenty million dollars per movie!
When his father died, he took out that check he had made out to himself all those years ago and put it in his father’s casket. You see, his father taught Jim Carey how to pursue his dream.
Now please don’t misunderstand me here, I am certainly not encouraging you to tap into some New Age, mental mumbo-jumbo. I am also clearly not telling you Ace Ventura, Pet Detective is God’s plan for your life. If you believe that, you could be dumb…and dumber! However, I am showing you that Jim Carey tapped into a biblical principle. What you continually see…you’ll eventually be! What you continually view…you’ll eventually pursue! What gets your attention…gets you!
Over the last couple of weeks, we shared our key scripture in this series from Proverbs 4:20-23:
“My son, attend unto my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
Then we began to discuss “6 Very Vivacious Viewpoints Verifying the Vitality of the View”:
1. What I continually see…affects me (Matt. 12:33-35).
This week let’s continue…
2. What I continually see affects my priority (Matt. 6:22-24).
Here the Bible tells us, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
In essence, Jesus is telling us here that you can’t keep your focus on both money and God. Whatever you continually focus on becomes your master…good or bad. When you focus on the promises of God, you will begin to see life as God sees it. Unfortunately this is when the devil endeavors to skew our view. If he can effectively sully our view of God and how we see Him, it will affect how we see all of life. You see, the devil’s clearly been doing this all the way back in the Garden of Eden.
The Bible tells us in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Notice the phrase “Hath God said”. At first glance it may seem there is nothing here. However the devil left out one word in which he was endeavoring to cast God in a very faulty image! He left out the word “Lord”.
Up until that moment, God had always been referred to as the “Lord God”. The word “Lord” is the Hebrew word Jehovah. Jehovah was in the Old Covenant the redemptive and personal name for God. “Jehovah” introduced the loving, personal nature and redemptive character of our God. For instance, God revealed Himself as “Jehovah Rapha”…the Lord that heals! So simply but subtly, the devil endeavored to change Adam and Eve’s view of God. Simply by dropping this one little word “Lord”, it wrongfully affected Adam and Eve’s view of God in two primary ways:
1. God is impersonal
2. God is a withholder
The devil still does the same today. The same Christian who will tell you that God is love and He loves you, will also tell you that God will give you cancer to teach you something, or that God will kill your child in a car wreck as a form of discipline. NO!! God is NOT a car-wrecking, cancer causing, Creator! He is a loving, life-giving Lord! (See John 10:10, Acts 10:38, James 1:13, and John 1:17!)
You see, it’s very difficult to focus on a “mean master”. The Bible tells us in Psalm 26:3, “For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.” Here David knows to keep God’s “lovingkindness” before his eyes. It’s so much easier to trust, follow and focus on a loving Heavenly Father!
Now, how you view God will determine how you view others. The Bible also tells us, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry” (Ps. 34:15), and “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (II Chron. 16:9).
When you understand that God’s view is to bless and encourage others then we quickly understand that our eyes should be doing the same thing! The Bible says in Proverbs 22:9, “He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he gives of his bread to the poor”. When we see that God’s eyes are generous and searching for someone to bless, then we begin to have a generous eye searching for someone to bless! That’s when life gets really fun!
Next week, we’ll continue our series!