Guest Devotion: The Scales Fell Off My Eyes

Meet my friend, Lee Goatley Purdom.

Though our friendship yo-yo’s as life takes us on different adventures, Lee and I have been close friends since middle school. The Lord has always used her as an encouraging and supportive voice, most recently in the process of writing my book, The Healing Path. She serves on the Commercial Operations team at Catalent Pharma Solutions. Her Kingdom impact shows up in many ways, but most noticeably in her roles of wife and mother as she and her husband, Zach, are raising two beautiful children. I am thankful she always reminds me that we all have a seat at God’s table. Praying her message blesses you today!

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe (Ephesians 1:17, NIV).

Confession: I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. But the people of the Bible, the stories, and Jesus, have sometimes felt very distant. Friends and family members would express their desire to travel to the Holy Lands, and there was nothing in me that felt excited to do that. When I heard or read a story in the Bible, the people were categorized more like characters in my brain. I didn’t think about them as actual humans. I’ve perpetually had a hard time intellectually connecting with and understanding the happenings of the Bible with the very Americanized and millennial lens that is my worldview.

One Sunday about two years ago, l was “listening” to a sermon at church. The Bible passage was from Romans and it mentioned the Apostle Paul. To walk you through the stream of consciousness of my brain in this moment I thought:

Romans was written to the Christians in Rome. Rome is in Italy. I really want to travel to Italy. The Sistine Chapel. The Vatican. The wine. David. Florence. The wine….

Those were my honest thoughts, though not my proudest, because I wasn’t listening to, or learning from, the sermon. However, at that moment, I had the clearest, simplest, and most humbling revelation. Paul, THE Apostle Paul, was in Rome, Italy. A place where I can be in less than a day and is on the top of my travel destination list. Whoa!

Prior to being the Apostle Paul, he was called Saul. To summarize, Saul had been “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” and was taking Christians as prisoners (Acts 9:1). When Saul was walking on the road toward Damascus, a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Jesus spoke to Saul. Saul was told to get up and go into the city and that he would be told what he must do. When he opened his eyes, he could see nothing.

Let’s read in Acts Chapter 9. In verse 15, while Saul was traveling, the Lord told Ananias to “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.”

Keep reading. Verses 17 and 18 say: “Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord – Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here – has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.”

Comparatively, the physical scales that fell from Saul’s eyes were more tangible than the laughable logic that led me to the realization that I could be in the same place as people in the Bible. However, for me, it felt like putting on prescription glasses after a lifetime of cataracts and blurred vision. I felt like I could see Jesus and his words in the Bible with a clarity that I didn’t know was possible. I didn’t realize how clouded my vision was until I put on these new glasses.

How I read the Bible changed. How I learned about Jesus deepened from the shallow grazes of understanding to a multi-dimensional emotional, intellectual, and spiritual connection. The proverbial scales fell off my eyes. Paul was a real human who walked the roads in Rome where I can walk too. For the first time in my life, the Bible felt tangible, and the people of the Bible felt real.

If I were to summarize what I’m sharing, over the past two years, my relationship with Jesus has transformed from a deep faith in His existence and understanding of His presence to an active relationship with him, which still feels new, fresh, and raw.

As I started reading the Bible more, verses like Ephesians 1:17 kept surfacing. It says, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

This reminds us that, like Paul, we can pray for the eyes of OUR and OTHER hearts’ to be enlightened so that we can know God’s hope.

This week, take some time to read and reflect on Ephesians 1:17. Pray for the Lord to enlighten the eyes of your heart. Pray for friends and family members hearts’ to be enlightened as well.

#christ #thenarrowpath #faith #hope #jesus