What Do You See – Once More

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, it is so good to be back with you.

If you are new to our church and we haven't met, my name is Jason.

My wife and I started this church 15 years ago in our living room.

And as a thank you for the 15 years of service that we put in, our board of overseers asked us to take a break this summer and catch our breath.

And it was a gift to us.

And my hope is that you feel like it is a gift to you in this.

But but I want to take a moment and I want to kind of point out a few things that I really learned and focused on over these last couple of months.

Just a few sabbatical observations.

The first one is this is we get one shot at this life.

And I don't want you to miss it.

And I want to say thank you to you as our church and to our board of overseers for a gift to kind of not miss it, to slow down in the middle of everything.

My hope for you is that you have the courage to prioritize the stuff in your life that actually matters so that someday when you are reflecting on your life at the end of your life, you won't say I wasted it or I missed it, but you'll say I soaked in every single moment.

Here's the second observation.

It's that so many people don't go to church on Sundays.

And I know this might sound silly to you, but I go to church every Sunday.

And I'm here before the sun rises, and I'm here till after lunchtime on Sundays, and I don't really know what's kind of happening outside of church, but it it floored me how many of my neighbors were home during the day.

I would go to grocery stores and other stores, and it were packed with people on Sunday mornings.

Let me be clear.

I don't think that you have to go to church to be a Christian, kind of.

Like I say that kind of, and here's the reason.

I don't think that you can say you love someone, but you hate their spouse.

So there's a lot of wounded people out there who are like, I love Jesus, but I hate organized religion or I hate the church.

That misses the point altogether.

But the bigger deal is there's so many people that just have no connection to God whatsoever.

And I want us to do something about that.

Like I want it to break our hearts.

I want to care about the people who are disconnected from God.

Had a funny moment kind of early on in the sabbatical season.

Um, I went I went to a restaurant at lunchtime and it was on a Sunday, maybe 11:30 or 11:45.

And as I opened the door, a tall man stepped out and he goes, Pastor Jason.

I said, Hey, he goes, Um, what are you doing?

It's Sunday, why aren't you at church?

And I'm gonna be honest, I didn't know who it was, so I said back to him, I said, Why aren't you at church?

And he goes, You caught me, and he walked off.

And so, if you are here today, I'm sorry, and welcome back to church.

And uh, so fun.

But we can do something about this and we can make space for people who need to hear from God.

Let me talk about this for one second.

Look around.

Look around.

We've maxed this place out.

Here's what I need some of you to do.

I need some of you to make the decision to care about others more than you care about yourself.

So, what does that mean?

I need you to shift service times.

I need you to come to the 9 o'clock or come to the 12 o'clock.

We've got something for the early birds, and we've got something for the people who, you know, don't really understand that the morning starts before 9 a.m.

at noon.

And so here's what I need you to do.

I need you to create an open seat for people at optimum times.

We've got people sitting and standing across the back.

Like, we need to create space for people.

So will you help me and do this?

We're not even in the fall yet.

We're like in the next few weeks, this is gonna be ridiculous here, so help me create open seats.

Sabbatical observation number three is this pants are the worst.

And um, what I mean by this is I wore shorts the whole summer.

It was unbelievable.

And I put pants on them, my legs felt like they were in prison.

Maybe Winnie the Pooh had it right all along.

You know what I'm saying?

And so, pants are the worst.

And number four, and this is a big one, our church never missed a beat.

I love this so much.

Let me celebrate this for a moment.

We had incredible speakers, our pastors and our staff are unbelievable, wonderful job by all of them.

Beyond that, you are the most irrationally generous people I've ever met.

We had the single biggest giving month in the history of our church.

In a month, I wasn't even here.

Jerks.

We did.

And you're so irrationally generous.

Check this out.

Because of your generosity, we did projects in Honduras and in other places in the world.

We've had hundreds and hundreds of children who were hungry this summer here in our city.

And and check this out.

When we built this building, um, we had to take on a loan from the bank, just you know, a little loan of several hundred thousand dollars, and we paid it all off this summer, everybody.

So cool.

And all of that without me here, last last Sunday we had 57 people go through our next steps class to join our church, which is crazy.

So I've come to the realization that this church might be better without me.

So we'll see you in January, everybody.

And just kidding.

Hey, this fall is gonna be crazy around here.

Let me give you a kind of a sneak peek of the next month and a half or so.

I've got four this fall of the greatest speakers, communicators, and leaders in the country coming.

I only want to bring you the best.

And I want you to write down two dates because these are no skip, all skate kind of Sundays.

You have to be here.

The first one is Labor Day weekend, Sunday, September 4th.

Pastor Randy Bizzette from Bayside Community Church will be here.

He is an unbelievable friend.

He is a pastor in my life.

And on top of that, he leads, if it's not the largest, it's one of the two or three largest, most incredible churches in the state of Florida.

You are going to love him.

You're gonna laugh until you hurt.

I mean, it's gonna be an amazing Sunday.

The second one I want you to write down, pull your calendar out.

In January of this year, to go along with our 22 days of prayer to start off 2022, we started something new called Revival Night, and it was a game changer for us.

I loved it.

I feel like our church just went to a new level spiritually.

It was so great.

And I didn't want to wait till January to do it again.

And so this September we're doing a special one-off revival night, kind of a refresher.

It's gonna be on Wednesday, September 28th at 6 30 p.m., and we got the best of the best.

Pastor Jimmy Rollins is coming.

It's gonna be an incredible time.

And so, whatever you do, this is a no-miss Wednesday night, 6.30, and let's come together.

Let's seek the face of God.

It's gonna be standing room only.

So come here early, get you a seat.

It's gonna be amazing.

Today, kicking off, a three-part series that I think is gonna be so important for the future of your life.

The series is called What Do You See?

I want to talk to you about the vision that God has for your life.

Many years ago, I was in middle school at this point.

That actually feels like many, many years ago.

It was right at the end of the Civil War, is what it feels like.

I was in middle school, came home one afternoon, and my parents said, Jason, we need you to sit down.

And that didn't normally happen in my family growing up.

It was kind of a weird moment for me.

And they said, Sit down.

Um they said, uh, your friend Ben was involved in a terrible accident today.

Ben was my best friend in elementary school.

He lived two streets over from me.

We played basketball and football until the sun went down.

We played video games until our thumbs felt like they were gonna fall off.

My fridge was Ben's fridge, Ben's fridge was my fridge.

You have a friend like this, and we just loved each other, best friends, inseparable.

And one day when I was in middle school, Ben was out playing football with some other friends in his front yard, and he was going to catch a pass looking backwards at the ball, and when he caught it and turned around, he ran face first into a bush, and a branch went literally all the way through.

I'm so sorry, this is so disgusting.

It went all the way through his eye.

It was it was terrible.

And they tell me this, and I'm feeling nauseous, and I don't know what to do with this.

Well, a couple days go by and I want to go visit him, so I go to his house and he's all wrapped up, he looks like a hipster pirate, his eyes all bandaged up, and I come in and he's laying on the couch, and I knew he was okay when I walked in, and he said to me, He goes, Has that bush always been there?

And I thought it was just such a great line.

And then he said to me, He goes, I I don't I don't know what happened, man.

He goes, it just came out of nowhere.

Like it had been there forever.

In fact, that bush was probably there when his parents bought the house.

It had been there forever, and yet in that moment, it's like it sprung out of nowhere, it came out of nowhere.

All of us have had a moment like this, haven't we?

We've had a moment when we were driving and we turned and we didn't see someone and they they clipped our car.

We've had a moment when something surprised us.

But but what about not the physical stuff?

What about the emotional stuff?

You ever had a moment that sprung out at you and it came out of nowhere?

Everything was good, your life was all sunshine and roses, it was beautiful, and then all of a sudden the other shoe dropped, and you got the divorce papers handed to you.

Everything was going great in your life and you were betrayed or hurt, you were lied about.

Everything was going wonderful in your life, and then you lost the dream job.

Your kids turned on you, you hurt you, you got the diagnosis, like things happen.

And we feel like it came out of nowhere.

In fact, the word we might use is we feel blindsided by these moments.

And all of us have these moments in our life, these moments that are detrimental to our soul.

It leaves our soul feeling like it is shattered into a million little pieces.

Blindsided.

And sometimes we turn to God when these things happen and we ask him, Where are you?

What's going on in this moment?

Where were you in these moments?

But Jesus Himself, John 17, said, in this world you will have problems.

Translation, you will be blindsided by some moments, but what you do in the moments when you're blindsided dictates what you do in your future.

Here's what I want you to know today.

The enemy of your soul would like nothing more than for those blind-sided moments to turn into moments that I would call blind-sighted.

Now, this is interesting because this phrase is actually kind of oxymoronic.

How can a person be blind and sighted at the same time?

And it is because you see in two entirely different ways.

You have the physical ability to see when one of your five senses through your eyes.

You have eyesight.

But according to the book of Ephesians, chapter one, Paul says, and may the eyes of your heart be also enlightened.

It means that you see on a different level.

There is a dimension to your soul which God created you with.

Satan's desire would be to kind of take that away from you, the ability to see with your spirit, to see a picture or a vision of the future.

Vision is simply this.

Vision is a picture of God's preferred future for our life.

And God wants you to have a vision for your life, because if you don't, you won't be able to step into the life He has for you.

That the book of Proverbs, the wisest man to ever live, Solomon, said it like this: Proverbs 29.18.

He said, Where there is no vision, the people perish.

This doesn't just mean physically dying, it means emotionally dying.

It means the death of dreams and hopes and relationships.

It's like the world around us can crumble around us when we don't have a vision for our life.

The Hebrew word for this word vision is interesting.

It's the word kazon.

It sounds like calzone.

And I got a vision for that later today, but that is not what that means.

Kazone literally means a picture.

It is this beautiful picture of the life that God has for us and that He invites us to step into.

That same verse that we just read in the NIV translation says it like this where there's no revelation, where there's no picture from God, people cast off restraints.

It means they get a case of the who cares.

Doesn't make that, doesn't make a difference, anyways.

And so what happens is we just kind of like, uh, whatever, whatever happens, happens.

It is what it is, and we just cast off restraints and we just go through this life as if we have no point whatsoever.

And I just want you to know this: you were created for significance, not just survival.

You were created to matter, your life was created on purpose, for a purpose.

That the master artisan who breathed the world into existence knew before the foundations of the earth, Ephesians chapter 1 says that the world would need you for this moment.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

So God created you on purpose.

That same verse we just read in the message translation, Eugene Peterson says, if people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves, constantly tripping over their present and stumbling into their future.

But when they attend to what he reveals, they are the most blessed.

This word blessed means happy in their soul, contented, knowing that they are doing something that matters with their life.

So the question today that I want to wrestle with is what do you see?

What is the vision that you have for your life?

And for those of you who have allowed the circumstances of this life to dictate the vision of your life.

For those of you who are blind-sighted, you're unable to see the stuff that God has for you.

Today I believe that God wants to heal you.

The master surgeon wants to do surgery on you so that you leave able to see and dream again.

This year.

That was a big year for me.

This year I turned 40, and I know I don't look a day over 51 years old, but I turned 40 this year.

It's a big day.

And I noticed that as I'm getting older, Father, time is coming hard after me.

He is.

I've noticed I do dumb things.

Like I turn the radio down in my car to see better.

Anybody else do this?

Makes no sense.

Um, this week our dishwasher at home broke, and we bought a new one, and I did hours of research on it.

I got this one, it's got Wi-Fi built into it, and I'm like, Liz, it's got Wi-Fi.

She's like, for what?

I said, I don't know, but I'm excited about it.

40 coming at me.

But here was the moment though, the summer, this was the moment that I knew that I was getting a little older.

Uh I have two sons, and they're not really video game guys, they haven't been yet.

But this summer they said, Dad, we really want an Xbox because there's a football game called Madden that we want to play.

And if you know me, I love football and I love humiliating my children, and so I was like, let's get it, let's go.

We bought one.

And I remember the first time we played it, it's like my jaw hit the ground.

I couldn't believe how incredible the graphics are.

Probably a dozen times I said to the boys, man, if 10-year-old me could see this now, he wouldn't believe it's true.

Then I had to take my boys to show them what video games were like when I was their age.

Here it is, everybody.

It's a me, a Mario, and I I love this game.

Love it.

And it wasn't fancy, it wasn't 3D, it was 2D.

Everything was flat.

You could only go one direction, you couldn't go backwards in this game.

I saved the princess so many times, and that ungrateful girl never stopped to say thank you.

I did it over and over for her.

I love this game, I love it.

And everything was flat, nothing came out of nowhere, everything was in front of you the whole way.

And I got this picture that so many of us live our lives this way.

2D.

But we face all of our problems with what we have access to in our own strength.

And so what happens is if you see the world through a 2D lens, when someone hurts you, you'll say to yourself, Well, how can I hurt them back?

When someone betrays you, well, how can I stab them in the back?

When someone talks negatively about you, well, how can I gossip and slander them?

It's like we use what's in our own strength, or if you're a good person, you try to fix it in your own strength.

Well, someone hurt me, so I'll muster up the courage to fight through and I'll be mad at them, but I won't take it out on them.

Well, you're you're taking it out on yourself instead.

Like what are you doing?

And so many of us live these 2D kinds of lives, trying to attack the problems of this life that blind side us with 2D strength, our own ability.

And I just want to say to you, there is another dimension by which you can live your life.

It's not it's almost like a 3D kind of version of this.

It reminds me of this interesting story in the book of 2 Kings, chapter 6, that there is this great prophet Elisha, getting a little older in his life.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

And there's this day when they're kind of in this city, and this interesting moment happened, 2 Kings chapter 6.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

It says, when the servant of the man of God, so this man who served Elisha, he got up and went out early the next morning.

Just kind of imagine he pours himself a cup of coffee, steps up outside of whatever tent or house they have into the light, he wipes his eyes, takes a sip of his coffee, and he has this moment.

He says, He notices an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city.

So it's just like any other Tuesday, he wakes up, best part of waking up, folders in his cup, he steps outside, and he sees that they are surrounded on all fronts by an army, horses and chariots.

And he responds in 2D, like many of us tend to do when life isn't going our way.

He says, Oh no! Oh no!

Oh no, no, no, no, no, oh no, oh no, my Lord, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh, no.

What shall we?

You you and me, what shall we, what are we going to do?

What shall we do in this moment?

2D thinking.

Well, what can we do in our own strength?

What can we do?

Like, we can't fight everybody.

What are we going to do?

So he goes to Elisha with this.

Like, we're gonna die.

This is it, it's been a good run, it's been a good, it's been a good life.

This is how we die, this is how it ends.

And I just imagine Elisha, he's so chill about this whole situation.

Here's how he responds.

Look, don't be afraid.

Conveniently, this these three words, don't be afraid, is found 365 times in the Bible.

It is the number one command in all of Scripture.

Why?

Because life has plenty of moments to be afraid of.

It's like there's one of these phrases for every single day of the year.

Don't be afraid, the prophet answered.

And then I want you to see this.

I want you to see the dimension by which he sees the world.

Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

And then Elisha prayed.

And this is his prayer.

He says, Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.

And that's a weird prayer because he sees.

It's a weird prayer because he has eyesight.

He sees the problem, he articulates the problem.

Side note, articulating the problem is the easy part.

That's the 2D part of this life.

He sees his problem and he goes to Elisha and he says, There's this problem, and Elisha prays that his eyes will be open.

Like what a dumb prayer.

His eyes are already open.

He says, Open his eyes that he may see.

Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and this isn't just his physical eyes.

He's now seeing, like what Paul said, through the eyes of his heart.

He sees differently.

And he looked and he saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around around Elisha.

He sees it.

All of a sudden, he sees his 2D problem through a 3D lens.

It's like he feels surrounded, but what he doesn't seem to understand is that God has his problem solved already, even though he can't see it with his own eyes.

I wonder how many of us live our lives with the 2D perspective.

We live our lives unable to see because we've been so hurt, so abused, so betrayed, so walked out upon, and it's happened over and over and over to the point where we can see physically with our eyes, but spiritually we are stumbling all over ourselves.

So there's this interesting moment later in the Bible.

The book of Mark, chapter 8, Jesus, he comes up to the city and everybody wants his attention.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

Everybody wants to see what he's gonna do.

They want to see the miracles he's gonna perform.

They want to hear his teachings about God, which are so unique and fresh.

And Jesus rolls up to the city, but if you just read it at face value, it feels like Jesus is kind of having a bad day.

Like he's gonna do a miracle, but it doesn't work the first time.

And so his disciples must have seen this and thought, man, what is what is with him?

Is he preoccupied?

Did he not have his coffee this morning?

Like, what is wrong with Jesus today?

But Jesus is gonna teach them something, and he's gonna teach us something as well in the process of being the master surgeon that heals this man.

Here's what it is that there is a process to our healing.

And look, I believe Jesus wants to heal you today.

But he's gonna take us on a journey, and it's a similar journey to the man that he's going to heal.

And the question is, are you willing to do it?

Are you willing to go through the process and to let Jesus take control once and for all so that your vision can actually be restored?

Mark chapter 8, it goes like this.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

They came to Beth Seda.

If you're a note taker, circle that word.

They came to Beth Seda, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to what?

To touch him.

So there's these friends, and they lead a man who is blind to Jesus.

And I want you to notice something.

They say to Jesus, here's what we want you to do.

We want you to touch him.

Now what's funny is we know Jesus can heal him.

In all the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and all four Gospels, there's multiple times where Jesus heals a person who was blind, whether they were born blind or had become blind by circumstances in life.

We know that Jesus was able to heal physical eyes who were unable to see.

He did it many times.

But I want you to notice something.

These people bring their friend to Jesus and they tell Jesus how to do his job.

We want you to heal him.

So here's what you do.

Just do that thing.

Touch him.

We've seen it before.

We're excited.

Just touch.

Do the touch thing, and we're gonna go home and we're gonna celebrate you.

Just you do it, you touch him.

And I want you to notice how Jesus responds.

He doesn't touch the man, but instead it says he took the blind man by the hand and led him outside of the village.

Now let's pause here for just a moment.

Now there's a lot of things happening in this moment.

The friends are like, Jesus, you do the thing, the touch thing, or maybe you can use your words, just say, be healed, just breathe on him, just do you do something, do some magic, just heal him.

And Jesus is like, No, no, no, no.

And he takes the man by the hand and he leads him away from the people who were defining his current.

Reality.

You say, what does it mean?

It means when you're unable to see physically, you depend on the sight of others around you to tell you what you're experiencing in that moment.

A beautiful sunset.

Oh, the sky is orange and purple and pink.

They have to define it for you.

And usually people that are that have the condition of blindness are very comfortable in the places where they're familiar.

They're comfortable.

They know where the chairs are in their house.

They know where things are around their place.

But Jesus takes this man from a place where he's familiar and from the voices who are defining his reality, and he leads him away.

Now, why does this matter?

Well, the verse we read before said that there was a man from where?

From Beth Seda.

Beth Seda in Matthew 11, 21, Jesus curses the city.

He's like, Woe to you, Beth Seda.

You want all the things of God.

You want the miracles, the signs, the wonders, the healing.

You want all of that, but you don't want to actually change, repent, and to follow God.

You want all the goodness of God without the surrender to God.

You want all of it.

And goes on to say things like, if other villages had experienced half of what you've experienced, they would have all repented and followed after me, and you aren't willing to change.

And I read that and I thought, how many of us are like that?

Like we want the things of God.

God, heal me, touch me, bless my finances, God, work in this situation, God help, God, heal my heart.

Help, help, help, help, help.

It's all me-centered, me focused.

But we don't want to surrender control ultimately of our life to follow after him.

So Jesus takes this man whose whole life, his whole experience is defined by the chorus of voices from those closest to him.

Business leaders will say, Show me your friends and I'll show you your future.

I'll say it to you like this.

The people that speak into your life have the ability to build up your life or to tear down your life.

That's why your circle of friends is one of the most important decisions you can make.

It's the reason why you need to be in an access group.

It's the reason you need to lead an access group at our church.

It's because our relationships have the ability to thrust us into the future that God has for us or to cause us to stumble over and over and over again.

So Jesus takes this man by the hand.

He leads him away from the voices of those dissenting.

And what's interesting is every step further they get away from those friends, the softer those voices get, and the louder and the more clear his voice gets.

This is the reason that it's important for you to take time away from your routine.

This is the reason every once in a while you need a time and a day in a place where you break the normal, break the habits, break the routines, and you get away with Jesus.

You get away from your village.

So who is your village?

Who are the voices that have the most influence in your life?

Who are the voices that shape the direction and the directive of your life?

You see, unless you define those, they will define your life for you.

So Jesus walks him away from this village, and it goes on to say this.

He says he took the blind man by the hand, led him outside the village, and then and then, like, I can't figure Jesus out.

Like, I'm gonna be honest, this is problematic for me.

Jesus doesn't do the healing by touching, he doesn't do that.

He doesn't hug him, he doesn't speak words of life over him.

It says that Jesus spit on the man's eyes.

Now just imagine this.

You're the man, you've heard all the stories you can't see, but you've trusted Jesus.

You walked outside of the city limits, and Jesus is there with you, and you're like, money time, let's do this.

All right, Jesus, what's it gonna be?

The touch, the words.

And as he's talking, he hears Jesus go, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

And this has always been gross to me.

And it was gross before COVID, and now it's like, man, I don't even want you to blow out the candles on your birthday cake anymore, much less spin on me, right?

And he spits on the man.

Now, this is funny because this doesn't fit the kind of story that I would want.

I would want Jesus to do the touch thing or the healing from a distance, just say the words and watch the miracle happen.

But I need you to understand something about Jesus.

God does miracles on his own terms, not ours.

So many of us, we want to set the parameters for how God's gonna move in our life.

God, I need you to step in.

I need you to like fill my bank account, I need you to heal this relationship, I need you to change my husband, I need you to change my wife, I need you to change my kids.

And by change my kids, I mean, you know, like anything, like do anything, anything, just miracles.

Do something for me.

And we tell God how to work in our lives.

But God does miracles on his own terms, not yours, and not mine.

Jesus takes the man.

He leads him outside the village.

He he does that thing where he spits on him, and then something else happens.

He spit on the man's eyes, and he put his hands on him, and then Jesus asks this question four words, do you see anything?

Now, this is such an interesting moment.

Jesus has healed the man, but the man is going to answer in a way, in a moment, that reveals something that all of us have to come to terms with.

Here's what it is.

In the moments where Jesus asks us a similar question, when you think about the vision for your life, he's gonna ask, do you see anything?

Or the question of the series, what do you see?

You have an opportunity to be actually honest with God.

So many of us tell God what we think he wants us to hear instead of being honest.

Let me get really blunt with you.

God won't heal who you pretend to be.

We pretend, God, everything's sunshine and roses, everything's perfect.

It's cupcakes and butterflies and happiness, life is good, good, good, good.

And then it's like we wonder why God hasn't done a miracle.

How about when you pray?

You do what Paul says in Philippians chapter 4, and you reveal your heart to God.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

That means you pray at the level of your insecurity.

God, my marriage is falling apart.

And I can't imagine a future without her or him.

God, my kids are running away from home and they're on the highway to hell.

I can't do this without you.

It's in those moments of honesty and transparency where God works.

It's kind of like this as you get a little older, you go to the doctor, you've you've had this happen before, and you get an eye test, and you stand at the eye test, and you say, Okay, cover one eye, so you cover one eye, and the doctor says, read from the top, and you're like, E, F, P, T, O, Z.

And the further down you get, the harder it gets.

But imagine this.

Imagine if the doctor comes in and he says, We're gonna do an eye test in a moment, and he slips out the door, and so you cheat, and you run up to it and you memorize it.

E F P T O Z L P D E.

You memorize all of it.

So when he comes in, your eyes are so jacked up you can't even see the third line, but you lie in order to not have to get glasses.

This is how many of our prayer lives look like.

We go to God and we're not honest about it, and God's like, Well, how do you expect me to write a prescription that will heal you when you won't be honest about what you actually see?

Is that clear enough for you?

Like you, you don't get it.

Or what we tend to do, it'd be like me having messed up eyesight and going to someone else that wears glasses and taking their glasses and putting it on for me.

Just because it works for you doesn't mean it's for me.

So what we tend to do is we tend to look at someone else and say, they got a revelation from God.

That must be true for me as well.

And it may not be the right prescription for what you need from the master healer in this moment.

So Jesus says to the man, Do you see anything?

What do you see?

Do you see anything?

And the man answers honestly.

He looked up and he said, I see people, they look like trees walking around.

What's fascinating about this is this tells us a little bit about the man's condition.

What it means is, it means that this man hadn't been blind his whole life.

At one point, he was able to see.

You see, if he hadn't been able to see his whole life, he wouldn't know what people or trees look like.

And in saying this, he's admitting I can't fully see, but I can see a little bit better than I did a few minutes ago.

He's honest with Jesus in this moment.

But it reveals that somewhere along the way he lost his own physical vision.

I wonder how many of us this, if we could be honest, is the condition of our souls.

At one point, Jesus saved us and changed our life.

We got a picture of the vision God had for us, and somewhere along the way, we've been abused, offended, we've been betrayed, lied about, walked out on, we've had diagnoses that kind of disrupted and disoriented our faith, and all of them had this way of astigmatizing the vision that we have for our lives.

Everything that was once clear is now blurry and out of focus.

I just want to say to you, you serve a God who understands.

And the next two words might be two of the most consequential words in all of Scripture.

The next verse, it says this, it says, once more.

So Jesus led this man away from the village, leads him away from the dissenting voices in his life, works the healing on his own terms.

He spits on the man.

The man is honest and says, I kind of can see, but it's not perfect.

And it says, once more, Jesus is gonna step in.

Once more, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes.

Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Let me say this to the person who's here who feels like God can't once more for them once more.

You serve a once more God.

Maybe you found yourself through your own choices, your own indiscretion, your own bad decisions.

You have found yourself so far away from the things of God.

And I just want to say once more, he wants to restore your vision.

Let me give you one more tip from the story.

The last verse of the story says this.

Jesus heals the man, he finally sees clearly, and Jesus sent him home, but with this advice, don't even go into the village.

Like once you identify the voices that have defined the reality of your life, once you begin to understand that there are some dissenting voices that are causing there to be an astigmatism of the vision in your life, you have to do whatever it takes to never go back to the village.

That means there might be some people in your life that you love, but you kind of have to cut their voice out as a voice of influence in your life.

It might mean for some of you that social media has to go because social media is a cesspool that drags you in to the worst of the worst of feelings, emotions, and it's affecting your reality.

It might mean for some of you there's a job you have to leave, there's a relationship that needs to change.

I don't know what it is for you, but I just want you to hear the words of Jesus.

Don't even go back.

Don't go back that way.

Once you walk out today and your heat, your vision is restored and healed, don't go back to the place that causes you to be unable to see.

So, what do you see?

What are the places in your life that have caused you to not have vision for your future?

What happened to you?

What was the thing that was done to you?

You were assaulted, and you think that God certainly couldn't care about me if he allowed that to happen to me.

Once more, he wants to touch and heal you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but but I trusted this person and they betrayed me.

I can't tell you, I think betrayal might be the worst pain I've ever walked through in my whole life.

I understand, and you serve a God who understands Jesus, the Son of God, the most perfect man to ever live, betrayed by people who hours earlier were screaming, Hosanna to him.

If one of Jesus' own 12 disciples could turn in him and betray him, what makes you think that you're gonna walk through this life without being hurt and betrayed by someone else?

And we allow the pain of this life to become the village of voices, the chorus of echoes of voices that speak over us, and they form what we see with our life.

And I just want you to hear the words of Jesus.

Don't go back to the village.

I'm leading you away from this place so I can heal you.

And I'm gonna heal you on my own terms, not yours.

And it may not look like what you want, it may not feel like what you want, and it may not be what you expect.

But if you'll trust me to be the leader in your life, I'll lead you from the place of pain to a moment of healing so that you can step in to the vision I have for you.

Here's how we're gonna end today.

Would you stand up with me all across this room?

And I don't want anyone to sneak out, I don't want anyone to go for just a moment, but I want you to take a moment where you examine your own heart.

Come on, all across this room, will you bow your head and close your eyes for just a moment?

I want you to leave here with an encounter with the living God.

Maybe you came today and you feel so blindsided, and that blind-sightedness has turned into blind sighted.

You're walking through this life, unable to see clearly the plan, the purpose, the vision that God has for you.

Today, the master surgeon wants to do surgery on you.

He wants you to leave changed, away from the village, away from those who have defined your life, so that his voice can speak the clearest and the loudest to you.

Once you have that, I'm gonna take a moment and pray for you.

This might be a moment when you say to God, I'm choosing to let go.

I'm letting go of my village, I'm letting go of my pain, I'm letting go of my abuse, I'm letting go of my betrayal, so I can hold on to you, so that you can lead me to heal me.

Jesus, we come to you today inviting you to do what only you can do.

Lead us away from the places of pain that have defined us, so that we can step into the life you have for us.

Jesus, we really do believe that you are the Son of God sent into this world to heal, to change, to restore.

You're the once more God.

So, for God, today, for those of us who came in feeling like we've just exhausted you, for those of us who walked in today feeling like you certainly don't have once more for me, God, be the once more God.

Heal, change, and restore.

We thank you for it, God.