This Easter, we are called to Turn Our Eyes Toward Jesus. I first did that in 1980, when I gave my shards of my alcoholic life to Him. My life was out of control, and my heart was broken. I had done things I should not have done, and did not do things I should have done (sins of commission and sins of omission). He took me as I was anyway and forgave me for a litany of sins. There is an old hymn called Turn Your Eyes Toward Jesus.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of this world grow strangely dim.
In the light of His glory and grace.
My conversion was like that. Things of this world did grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. The following days were filled with divine joy I hadn’t known since earliest childhood. The Holy Spirit filled my whole being; I could be brought to tears just to hear Jesus’ name. He had taken me just as I was, but He didn’t leave me there. I prayed He would make me more like Him and less like me. And so my journey toward the Celestial City began. The narrow path was filled with trials and pitfalls, defeats and victories. I often fell but got up, when I sinned, it was confessed and forgiven through the precious blood Jesus shed for the likes of you and me.
In 1984, I was struck with a serious adult-acquired disability (multiple sclerosis) at the age of thirty. I’ve spent most of my adult life with a creeping paralysis and wide-eyed terrors of severe neurological disease (and then cancer) but I always felt the presence of the Holy Spirit urging me on in my pilgrimage toward heaven.
I’m now seventy-two years old. What have I discovered over those forty-one years?
11. Life is frail. Things can change in an instant. Never take your health for granted. It can be taken from you.
22. We must not presume that chronic illness or disability is God’s punishment. Suffering may, in fact, be God’s tool to make us more like Christ and less like ourselves. The refiner’s fire. Our Lord said, “… It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.” (Matthew 18.8.) He was speaking of eternal life, but I also think that begins in this life. Our salvation begins on this side of the grave, when we give our lives to Christ through faith in Him who took away our sins through His sacrifice on the cross. It is through surrender to the will of God that we discover the purpose and meaning of our lives.
33. God is more concerned about our holiness than our happiness. True happiness is to be found in a personal relationship with Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
This Easter, I invite you to turn your face toward Jesus and accept His free gift of salvation. When all is said and done, what He did on that old rugged cross is all that really matters in the light of His death and resurrection. Jesus Christ is the hope of mankind.
Listen to Michael W. Smith sing Turn Your Eyes Toward Jesus here.
MDP
*Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus was written in 1922 by Helen Lemmel. Although blind, she wrote over 400 hymns. See
https://enjoyingthejourney.org/hymn-history-turn-your-eyes-upon-jesus/.
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