Seeing With Redemptive Eyes!!!

I was sitting in a men’s Bible study that Alonzo Brown started in one of the barber shops of our neighborhood. We were rapping about the prodigal son (Luke 15) and how we’ve all rebelled openly against God in different ways in our lives. Then this man Irvin made a comment that just sent a thunder clap to my heart,

“I thank God for prison! Prison saved my life!”

Being able to look back on our lives with Redemptive Eyes and see all that God allowed us to go through… and to thank him for it is something the Lord has really been teaching me these last few months. Irvin has Redemptive Eyes! Eyes that saw the Big Picture! Eyes that weren’t looking to complain or blame God for the things he went through, but to learn from and worship God for the things he allowed to happen.

This makes me think about the movie Signs (alien movie with Mel Gibson in it). All of these strange things are happening throughout the movie (girl leaving water everywhere, kid has asthma, brothers a baseball player) that don’t make a whole lot of sense until the end of the story. Then they all come together to make complete sense, Mel Gibson sees the Big Picture and he‘s able to use it to save his family. God wants to use all the things in our lives for His Redeeming Purposes!

I can think back on my life when I was just oblivious to Christ working in my life. The times where I only came to him during sports and prayed for a win, but didn’t care to know God and lived in complete rebellion to Him.
The times where I should have died driving home drunk or being in the car with friends when they were getting blazed, or breaking the law and the running from the police or fornicating and committing adultery because that what makes you a man……..
I can look back on all these things and say,
“God, I’m so thankful to be alive…. And that You didn’t kill me back then….when I deserved for You to strike me down, You loved me despite of where I was. You didn’t leave me there! You loved me and were merciful to me! And God some of the biggest things you allowed to hurt me are some of the biggest things you used to help me! Thank you God!!!!"
As believers we must put on Redemptive Eyes. God does not want to be divorced from any area of our lives. He wants to use our lives, and I pray he would continue to use mine, as a soundtrack, a commercial for his ultimate Redemption of His people.

And that’s my prayer for our neighborhood. That God would use the bad around us to teach and help people. That the families and boys and girls we love and give our lives away to would be able to see God’s Big Picture in their lives, even in the mist of pain and worship Him for the love and mercy he’s shown them, even when they were oblivious to His work in their lives!

JESUS THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY LIFE!!!!!!