Spiritual Vision

I had my vision corrected. Correcting my physical vision through contacts, contact lenses has really, really worked great for me. In fact, I have contacts on now, and I can see all of you quite well. I can see Johnny Snyder at the back of the room. I know who he is! I can see him. So I can probably see about as well as those of you who don't have contact lenses, who don't need corrective lenses. So it's been a pretty awesome thing as far as I'm concerned. All I've had to do is take a few minutes of maintenance each day and night to clean my contacts. Put them into my eyes, take them out, disinfect them, store them. Actually, it hasn't been any big deal at all. I don't even think about it anymore. I just do it, and it goes by very smoothly, and I can see very well. I think it's one of the greatest inventions ever. I lose glasses. Contacts, you know, they stay in my eyes. Much simpler for me. I haven't really been slowed down a bit by wearing these contacts. I can even snorkel, go under the water with my contacts on. You know, I only need to wear glasses when I don't have contacts in or when I want to read or see something up really close. So you'll see me put these reading glasses on because I can't see the Bible very well because it's small print. My notes are bigger so I can see those. I don't have to have them on the whole time. But I really don't want to talk a lot about my physical vision today. In this split sermon, I do want to talk mostly about my spiritual vision and what God has done for me in that area of my life and what He can do for you also. Because do you know what? Every single one of you need to have your vision corrected. You need to have your spiritual vision improved. You need to be able to see more clearly. I know I do. So what I'd like to do today is share with you what I've learned about spiritual vision over the years, some 40 years in God's Church. How is your spiritual vision? How clearly do you see spiritually? What do I have, again, that I can share with you today? I can't very easily share my contact lenses with you. I can't help you see better physically, but I can help you see better spiritually. What are the spiritual glasses and the spiritual contact lenses that help correct our spiritual vision and keep us focused spiritually? I'd like to share a few points with you today. Let's go to number one.

Being grateful and really embracing each and every day of our lives helps keep us spiritually focused. It helps us to see clearly, to have our spiritual vision improved. You have to be grateful if you really want to see clearly from a spiritual perspective. Don't you dare just let life happen around you. You know, that's one thing I've seen over the years. Some people just let life happen around them. They really don't have many goals. They don't have many aspirations. They don't have very few dreams. They don't have any clear purpose in life, it seems. And life just passes them by. So they're 14 years old one day, and then about 64 years old the next.

And they look back and they wonder where it all went. Where did the time go? Oftentimes they look back with regret because they didn't seize the day. So this first point is all about being grateful for each day and embracing life. So don't let life happen to you. Embrace it. Have goals. Have dreams. Think about what's really important to you, what makes you really happy. And go for it. You deserve to be happy. God wants you to be happy. God's a happy God. He wants you to be happy as well. So embrace your lives fully and be grateful for each and every day of your life. Look to God as your source of strength. Now that's what's really helped me all these years because at age 18 I realized I really wasn't all that strong. I remember telling my sister, I guess I'm just not man enough because I was starting to run away from God's truth. Thankfully I became man enough. I decided I really needed to do the right thing. So at age 18 I made a choice. I made a decision. And I've never regretted that decision. I'm grateful that I've been a part of God's church all these years because I've been richly blessed. I know for sure. I'm confident. I have faith that my life's much better because of that decision I made a long time ago. I didn't just let life happen. I made a decision. And you have to make a decision too. You young people that are 16, 17, 18 years old, it's important that you think about what you're going to do the rest of your life. When you're 60 years old, what are you going to think when you look back on your life? Don't look back with regret. Be grateful that you embraced life, that you embraced it fully, and that you were grateful and thankful for each day of your life. You know, God has given me great physical blessings in my life. You know, I have a lovely wife who loves me. She's good to me. I appreciate her a great deal. I have two precious children, a son and a daughter, both very fine children. We have a wonderful relationship with them. And now we have an incredible 2 1⁄2-year-old grandson.

In fact, I got to spend several days with him in the last two weeks. Well, most of the last two weeks we spent together either in Texas or in Florida. So we've been on the move. We spent some time together. We've had some wonderful times. He thinks Gee Pops is really great. He thinks Nana Bee is pretty special, too.

So we really enjoyed our grandson Zander.

But even if I didn't have any of these physical blessings, my wife, my grandson, my daughter, my son, I think for the most part I'd be very happy primarily because I know that I'm never alone. I'm never alone. I haven't been alone for a long, long time.

And I personally have the most loving, most compassionate, most understanding, and also the most powerful two friends anyone could ever have. And the wonderful thing is you do, too. They're your friends. God, the Father, and Jesus Christ. We can call them friends. They call us friends. As was already mentioned, we are God's saints. We are the called out ones chosen by God for a special purpose, special reason. That's why you shouldn't let life just happen around you because you were put here for a reason, and God expects good things out of you.

Each morning at noon and at night, I am connected to a great source of power and strength.

The Holy Spirit has enabled me to walk a very close and personal walk with Jesus Christ and with my Heavenly Father. And the Holy Spirit has strengthened me and allowed me to miss many harmful obstacles in life. God's been good to me. Each day I'm never alone. God has promised to never leave us nor forsake us, and in my case, He never has.

And in your case, He never will because He's faithful, He's true, and we can count on Him.

And even when I've allowed myself to do some pretty stupid things, God has always been there for me and has never left me.

The Father sent His Son to heal the blind like me.

I was spiritually blind, but God helped me see. In Luke 4, verse 18, we see that Christ did come to heal the blind.

Let's go to Luke 4, verse 18.

Luke 4, verse 18.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Christ says. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, and He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted.

Christ came to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.

Now, Christ healed some who were blind physically, but He's mostly in the business of healing people spiritually, healing their eyesight so that they can see clearly from a spiritual perspective.

To set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Eternal.

You see, Christ is coming back, and He is going to establish His government and His kingdom on the earth, and He's going to come back with great power.

Now, He came the first time for salvation. He came to die for you and me.

But He's coming back again with tremendous power, and He's going to rule with a rod of iron.

Thankfully, Christ is also pure love, and only He can rule the way He can, with a rod of iron and with love at the same time.

He knows how to do that. He's good at it.

We should look forward to that day. In Isaiah 42, verse 16, there's a prophecy of Christ, the Messiah.

He says, I will bring the blind by a way they knew not. I will lead them in paths they have not known.

God has led me in paths that I had no idea I would go. Certainly never thought I'd be in the ministry.

I was the most unlikely to be in the ministry at some points in my life.

But God has led me in a way that I never knew. I will make darkness light before them, God says, and crooked things I will make straight.

These things will I do unto them, and I will not forsake them.

God's promise that He will not forsake us. I hold to that promise. I believe in that promise. I know God keeps that promise.

So I have God, I'm never alone. I have Jesus Christ as my Savior. I'm never alone. And besides that, I have all of you.

And that's a good thing, too, to have lots of friends, to have a big family.

You know, we just left our close church family in Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas. We were there 19 years.

I'm now pastoring in Dallas and in Sherman, Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And I'll be getting the Lawton congregation back shortly, in 1 January.

So we're looking forward to seeing them again more often.

You know, it was hard to leave all the brethren behind that we knew so well.

But because of God's Spirit, we arrived in Texas to a ready-made, loving family.

Great people. Some of them are here, the Sabbath.

They've received us very warmly.

What a great blessing God and His spiritual family has been for me and for my wife over these past 40 years.

My wife's been in the church even longer. She was only 10 years old when she came in the church.

So we've had incredible blessings, and being a part of a big family is one of those wonderful blessings.

So if you don't see life through the eyes of gratitude and appreciation, your spiritual vision will suffer greatly.

If you're not sitting there very, very thankful that you're here today, then your spiritual vision is certainly suffering.

You're not seeing clearly.

What type of person are you? Are you a very grateful, thankful person?

Or do you tend to be a complainer? Do you tend to be a grumbler, a pessimist, a negative person?

You know it's your choice. What type of person do you choose to be?

You don't have to be a certain way. You choose the way you're going to be.

So choose to be positive about things, and choose to be grateful, and choose to be thankful, and choose to know that God's always there for you, even during the dark and difficult times in life.

If you do, you'll definitely have better spiritual vision. You'll see more clearly what's really happening in the world.

In 1 John 4, verse 14, John says, John says, and we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

Do you believe that? Do you personally believe that? That Jesus Christ is indeed the Savior of the world, and that the Father sent Him for that express purpose, for that reason.

You know, John and the other disciples were eyewitnesses to the miracles that Christ performed. They saw with their own eyes who Christ is. They saw Him perform miracle after miracle. He fed thousands of people with a few fishes. He changed water into wine. He healed the lame, the crippled. He healed the blind and the deaf. He healed everyone who came to Him that He decided He would heal. He healed them all. As far as I know, I don't see a certain... I don't see anywhere in the Bible where He wasn't able to heal someone who came to Him for healing.

He healed them all. He'll heal you. He'll heal your vision, your spiritual vision.

In 1 John 1, verse 3, John says to the brethren, he says, He says, You see, John was there. He knows Christ. He knew Him intimately. He knew Him firsthand. Again, He was an eyewitness. He saw Him die for Him. And He was also willing to die.

He laid His life down for the cause because He knew who His Savior was. And He knew that Christ was coming back.

He says, We can have fellowship with the Father and Christ. You can have fellowship with God and Christ every day of your life. You have to be able to see that and know that to be true.

In Matthew 13, verse 17, Christ says, Many prophets and righteous men have desire to see what you have seen. To be here, to be on the earth when Christ was there on the earth.

Now, we haven't actually had the opportunity to actually see Christ in the flesh. I believe He came in the flesh. We didn't see Him in the flesh. But I'll get to a scripture a little bit later on that is a very powerful one, that we can see that Christ is indeed with us because we believe. We have faith. We trust in God and we believe. So be grateful for the knowledge that you have at this time. Are you grateful for what you know and what you understand? You know, back in the old days, they didn't have Bibles like this, and they surely didn't have Bibles like this. I've got e-sword on here. I can go. I can find every scripture by searching for it. It's all very simple. It's at my fingertips. The Bible is here for us, and after commentary, and all these Bible helps, all on this little iPhone right here. I'm grateful to be able to have such access to God's truth and His Word. You should be grateful as well. I was really thankful that I could wear contact lenses when I went and got them. Man, it was awesome. I could see very clearly. I had hard contacts at first, and they were a pain. Then I got some soft ones, and man, they've been really great for 40 years now. Again, I can see very, very clearly my physical vision has been healed, basically, through contact lenses for these past 40 years. So I'm truly grateful for the vision that God's giving me, more so my spiritual vision.

The first point, again, brethren, is that we need to be grateful for this vision that God gives us. The spiritual vision, because He's the one that opens your mind to truth, and frankly, there aren't many people here today. Out of the millions of people that live around Houston, there are very few gathering together on the Sabbath. The reason we're here is because God gave us spiritual vision and opened our minds to His truth. Secondly, being faithful in the daily maintenance is essential to good vision. I told you already that I had to maintain my contacts. I couldn't just put them in and leave them in for months at a time. Otherwise, I would have undoubtedly gotten eye infections. I would have gotten eye diseases. I might not even have any eyes, because they might have gotten so infected that they fell out. I don't know. I'm not going to try to find out, either. But every day, I've been very faithful in cleaning my contact lenses, because I'm putting them right in my eye, right on top of my eye. Every day, I want it to be clean as possible. So I've always been very faithful to clean my contact lenses. Otherwise, again, I could be sick. As a result, they've been very healthy.

Now, in Deuteronomy 11, verse 7, it talks about how the people of old, Moses and the children of Israel, who came out of Egypt, he says, Your eyes have seen all the great acts of God. All those miracles that were performed in Egypt, God brought them out of Egypt with a high hand. Miracle after miracle, there was plague upon plague on the Egyptians, where God was delivering them out of Egypt. He says, Your eyes have seen all the great acts of God, but he also said, You're likely to forget God. And certainly, they did forget God, even though they saw these great acts of God with their own eyes.

In Acts 4, verse 20, the apostles, who were being called out at that time, John and the disciples, said, We cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard. That's what they said. They were being thrown into prison, because they were willing to speak these things that they were seeing, that God was intervening in people's lives, that Christ was indeed the Savior of the world, that Christ laid his life down.

And they were getting behind this cause, and they were being persecuted for it. They said, You know, we can't but speak the things that we've seen and heard. They were eyewitnesses. They knew it happened. Read the book of Acts. It's incredibly inspiring, and it's a true story. It's not just a story.

It's a true story. In John chapter 20, verse 29, it says, Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed. That's the scripture I told you I'd tell you about.

John 20, verse 29, Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed. That would be us. Now, we really haven't seen all these great acts. I mean, we've seen some things, because God's certainly alive, and God does at times intervene. I've seen some miraculous things.

Haven't seen near as many as I'd like to see. Haven't seen near as many as I hope to see. But I know God is real. But I haven't seen all these firsthand eyewitness things that some of the disciples saw. Those who lived with Christ and saw Him die for them. But He says, Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed. Now, I believe there's a great blessing for us who have not seen, but we believed.

And that we are faithful. Some of us for 40 years or longer. I don't think God looks at that lightly. I really don't. No, I think there's so few of us. I think we are precious in God's sight. I believe that. I believe you are precious in God's sight, because you are a believer. So, blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed. I've also seen the need throughout the years to daily maintain my spiritual vision.

For the most part in the past 40 years, I have done that. You know, I haven't been perfect in that. You know, I've been lax at times. Probably just like you have. There are probably times when you could have done it better in your prayer, in your Bible study, in your fasting, in meditating on God and His truth and His way of life.

You probably could have done better. I know I could have. But for the most part, I've maintained my spiritual focus. And God has been gracious. He's forgiven me the times when I haven't. He's been with me every step of the way. I have read the Bible just about every single day for 40 years. I've prayed just about every day for 40 years. Again, not every single day. I've been a few days when I took a vacation from God, and that's not a smart thing to do. You don't want to go back to Egypt.

Don't take any trips back to Egypt. Stay in the Promised Land. So be faithful in your daily maintenance. Read your Bibles each day. Just a little bit. It doesn't take long for me to take care of my contacts. It really doesn't take all that long for you to take care of some spiritual maintenance. You should be reading your Bible every day, so stop making excuses if you're not doing that.

Because that's an excuse. There's no good reason for you to not read the Bible every day. There's no good reason. If you have 24 hours a day, can't you take 15, 20, 30 minutes in a day's time to show God how important He is and how important His truth is? So stop neglecting the daily maintenance of your spiritual vision and your spiritual lives. Certainly get down on your knees each day.

Daniel and David, they did it three times a day. And they were faithful in that. Fasting regularly is also important in maintaining good spiritual vision because fasting is a tremendous power tool. It's a power tool spiritually. Remember, Christ said some things don't happen except by prayer and fasting. So prayer and fasting together are spiritual power tools. If you want something to happen in your life that hasn't yet happened, perhaps it's because you haven't taken it seriously enough and done your part in the prayer and the fasting part.

Take God at His word. He says some things aren't going to happen in your life spiritually unless you take the time to pray and to fast and to be diligent. It still may not give you exactly what you're looking for, but it may make a big difference. So try it out. Being faithful in the daily maintenance is essential to good vision. So let's pray more, let's study more, let's fast more. And you know, one thing I can say is that I have been very diligent on meditating each and every single day of my life.

I don't think there's a single day in my life since God called me that I haven't thought about Him and what He wants for me. I doubt whether it is a single day. That's how important God has been to me for the past 40-some years, and I suspect you're the same way I am. There's some faithful people in here. There are some very good examples in here of God's truth and God's way of life.

Let's go on to a third point to discuss here in regard to our vision, spiritual vision. Commandment-keeping does help us maintain good spiritual insight and vision. You've got to keep the commandments of God. That's a no-brainer. God gives us His commandments for a reason. They're good for us. There are blessings that come through keeping His commandments, and God says, do it or don't do it, depending on the case.

But we are to keep His commandments, and His commandments will keep us in good stead. Now, you're familiar with Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. If not, you should get familiar. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you should go to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. It talks about the blessings and cursings that come to us, whether or not we keep His commandments.

He says there will be a lot of curses on those who don't keep the commandments. It's in the Bible, so we shouldn't be shocked to see a world that's been cursed for a long time now.

But there's also rich blessings that come from keeping His commandments and doing those things that are pleasing in His sight. In Deuteronomy 28 verse 29, God says, and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. That's because you're not keeping the commandments.

It is axiomatic if you don't keep God's commandments. There will be some curses that will come along in your life. Believe it, it's true. You're going to grope at noonday, as someone who's blind, who can't see, who's stumbling around in the dark. You're not going to prosper. If you want to prosper, then you should keep God's commandments.

If you like stumbling around in the dark, then don't bother. In Zephaniah chapter 1 verse 17, there's a prophecy. God says that I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord. That's why they're going to stumble around like blind men, because they've sinned against God, and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Not a very nice picture, is it? That's what's going to happen to this earth before Christ returns. It's in the Bible, it's guaranteed. It's true, it's going to happen. God's been very, very merciful and gracious that it hasn't happened yet. But it's got to happen.

It's going to happen. We better be ready for it when it does. And in Proverbs 29 verse 18, which is basically the theme for this weekend, where there is no vision, the people perish. Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint is another way of saying it. If there's no vision, if you don't see clearly, spiritually, you're not going to keep God's commandments.

What's the point? Is there any reason to keep God's commandments? You don't believe in God if you don't trust in Him, if you don't have faith in Him. If you don't believe He's going to do what He says He's going to do, where there's no vision, the people perish. Eventually, they perish because the wages of sin is death. They'll all perish if they don't repent and change. It's a requirement. It's got to happen. If you want to be in God's kingdom, you've got to believe it, and you've got to start living it. 4. Loving God, loving Christ, and all others, even our enemies, shows good spiritual insight and vision.

This is, again, a no-brainer. God is love, and He's in the business of creating a family just like Him. He wants all of us to become love. That's what He wants for you and me. He wants us to become love. He wants us to learn to love each other. He says, He that hates his brother is in darkness. That's 1 John 2.11.

If you hate your brother, then you're in darkness. You're blind. You can't see. You walk in darkness. And you know not whither He goes, because that darkness has blinded His eyes. He that hates his brother is in darkness. If you harbor hatred or resentment of any kind, if you aren't willing to forgive, then you're harboring resentment and hatred.

You have to be willing to forgive, even if they don't know what they're doing. And mainly because they don't know what they're doing oftentimes. You know, Christ said, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. They don't have the same spiritual vision that you have. They're limited. They're stumbling around in darkness.

They're blind. They can't see. So let's give them a break, and let's be forgiving. And let's pray for them more fervently and faithfully, and hopefully they'll change. If you don't love your brother who you have seen, how can you love your Heavenly Father who you have not seen? If you don't love the brother sitting next to you, or the sister next to you, or down the aisle, or down the road, or in the bathroom, or wherever they are, if you don't love them, you've seen them, and you can't learn to love them, there's got to be something to love about them.

They're just like you. They're made just like you. They're not perfect, but you aren't either. So you've got to learn to love these fleshly beings that are walking around here. And you need to realize that we all need to realize that I'm talking to myself here. You know, I have to learn to love everybody that God brings into contact with me. That's what God wants. He doesn't want us to reject anyone. God doesn't reject people.

They reject Him, but He does not reject them. And we need to become like God. So you've got to learn to love your brother, so you can learn to love God. And the last point, number five, having good consequential reasoning is a part of having good spiritual vision. If you have some consequential reasoning, I think I talked about that the last time I was in San Antonio, and mentioned that at the last weekend. Consequential reasoning. In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4 says, "...in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not.

Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." If God is calling you now, then He will give you some good consequential reasoning. In other words, He'll help you think about the consequences of what you're about to do. And He'll give you the strength to stop doing it if it's wrong, or He'll give you the strength to do it if it's a good thing.

But you have to learn to think about the consequences of what it is you're planning on doing. Where are you going tomorrow? Or the next day? What are you going to be doing the rest of your life? You know, this is a huge topic. I only have a split sermon. I have to leave Mr. Petty some time. He might not be my friend if I cut him too short. But he loves me, right? He's shaking his head.

He says, Go as long as you want. Well, let me just go a little further, and then I'll leave it up to you to think about other things in regard to this sermon. You know, there are many spiritual eye diseases that can distort our vision, but the results are all the same. Blurred spiritual vision, even blindness eventually. For example, nearsightedness or myopia, that's an eye condition in which you can see nearby objects, but you can't see far away objects because they're far away objects appear fuzzy or blurry.

So I'm nearsighted. I can see up close, but I can't see far away. So in 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 9, it says, And he that lacks these things is blind. If you lack the things of God, if you lack the truth of God and his way of life, then you're blind.

You can't see afar off, it says. You can't. It's impossible to see afar off. You're spiritually nearsighted, and you've forgotten that God has purged you from your sins. If you go back to the vomit, it talks about going back to the vomit. Some people have been called of God, but they've allowed themselves to backslide. They've gone away from God. They've come up with all kinds of excuses as to why they don't really need to obey God or take Him seriously.

And they've backslidden, and they've forgotten that God purged them from their sins. And he made them white as snow. But they've gone back to the vomit. And so now they're in spiritual jeopardy again because they haven't repented. They don't see afar off. They don't have the vision to see afar off, to see God's kingdom, to see the beauty of doing it God's way and the results that will come if you do it God's way.

Some people spiritually are only able to just focus on the here and now. Their vision of the future is blurred. It's out of focus. When our focus is mainly on the here and now, one of two things is going to happen. Number one, we can worry so much about the present that we don't see life in the broader perspective. So we obsess with the cares of this life. And the fear and the worry that result because of that worry, because of taking anxious thought, it affects our faith and it affects our personal relationship with God.

You know, we're not close to Him. It affects our relationship. We start to question Him. We start to question His love. We start to question His wisdom, His motives. We lose faith, not only in Him, but in our future. Or secondly, we tend to focus on the here and now, and all that the world offers in the future is not directing our actions at the present.

You know, we don't have good consequential reasoning. We're not looking far enough out into the future to see where we're headed. So sometimes we just live for the present and we don't think about the future. Instead of being the guiding force for their decisions, the future is blurry.

It's far off. Something to put out of our minds as there are more important and pressing things right now. You really need both. You have to see up close and you have to see far away. You have to be able to see it all because if you don't see up close, then you're not going to take care of those daily maintenance things that are so important. Because if you don't daily maintain things, then you won't be there in the long term.

So you have to take care of the daily things and you do so by seeing into the future, seeing the wonderful future that God has for you. So there's nearsightedness, there's farsightedness, there's astigmatism, there's spiritual cataracts. Have you got any of those on your eyes? You need to get the scales off. It even talks about that in the Bible. Some people had scales over their eyes and Christ healed them. He took the scales away. With age, cataracts tend to develop. I haven't had any cataracts. I'm not looking forward to any either. I hope that God protects me from that. But that's an easy fix usually.

You can go in and have a cataract removed. Sometimes it's harder spiritually to get rid of the spiritual cataracts. Glaucoma is another problem. It's usually the result of abnormally high pressure inside the eye. I had a grandfather that lost his eye. He went in for a simple cataract surgery and he went in to fix his good eye. He had two bad eyes. One was better than the other one. He went in to fix the good eye and lost it. No vision at all. He lost his eye. It basically popped out because of glaucoma.

Now, that was years ago. They do a better job, I think, today. But that was even a rare thing back then for that to happen. A person can get spiritual glaucoma. Their vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. They don't have any peripheral vision. They can't see around them. They become very narrow-minded. They become very judgmental.

So there are many things to think about in regard to this. Some have said that really, the world...we see it upside down, but the mind turns it right side up. You've heard that, right? That's kind of amazing. See, some people think we're all upside down in our thinking. We don't keep Christmas. That's weird, right? No, that's not weird. That's what God says.

God says, don't learn the way of the heathen. He tells us, this is the way, walk you in it. He's showing us reality and the way to live and the right way to go. So let's make the right choices from now on. Let's be careful that we don't allow our spiritual vision to deteriorate. I'm really glad that back when I was 18 years old, that I could get some contact lenses that would help me for the next 40 plus years to see clearly, to see all of you.

I'm really grateful, really grateful for that, but I'm even more grateful because God opened my eyes spiritually back then. And I've reaped the benefits, the blessings of 40 years in God's Church. And I don't care what people tell you about God's Church. Those who are faithful and have hung in there, they've been greatly blessed. And they will continue to be greatly blessed if they continue to do the right thing. And if they stay faithful to the very end, then they'll see that, wow, it was all worth it. It was all worth it.

I had no idea. I has not seen nor ear heard. Neither has entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.