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Eye
See Faith: What the Locust Didn’t Eat
By John Bradley Lambeth
Sept. 21, 2009
Most Brazilians are very religious. Few, if any, have
difficulties believing in a miracle. And that is the very thing that
makes Brazil such an exciting place to work for the Lord: you often see the
impossible in action! Among many other cultural differences, there is a small
detail that stands out significantly to me—many Brazilians have a “habit”
of bringing pictures of their loved ones to be “prayed over.” That loved
one may be sick unto death at their home far away, but the family intercessor
will bring the photograph along to help the one who is praying get a grip on
the need.
Interestingly enough, they do not bring pictures of the loved one in their “fallen” state. No, the photos always reflect the original, previous, much-improved state—before the disaster, before the cancer, before the pain. In reality, the pictures reflect the size of the faith that the intercessor has for the needy loved one or friend. Their faith is big enough to believe that God can restore them to the original state!
What the Locust Ate Stepping aside, briefly—how big is your faith? Can God, in your eyes, restore what the locust ate? Or is your eye dimmed into grim forgetfulness of what the original state looked like? If we have become so blinded that our own minds blank out what the original looked like, how can we believe enough to see through the eyes of faith up to the creative (i.e. brand new) work that God wants to do in our lives. Not only does God want to restore to the original state, He wants to improve what centuries of sin have done to our generation.
As a missionary on the cutting edge of miracles, I am fascinated with the story of the blind man that got “spit” stuck in his eyes. After the first part of the miracle, he saw “men as trees, walking.” What a tremendous miracle for a man that was blind; at least now he would never again fall blindly into unseen holes. It was an Eye See (I see) moment. However, the second part of the miracle was an improvement on the first miracle! He saw “every man clearly” (Mark 8:23-25).
What’s in Your Picture? We must break out of our faithless world. We ought to at least have enough faith to go back to the original piquancy that existed before our present necessity, to go back to the original Eye See faith. That is the bare minimum faith level for these days that we live in. We must at least be able to believe in restoration of what the locust ate (Joel 2:25).
Yet for the truly bold, there is another level of faith, one beyond Eye See faith. It’s the faith that makes spiritual heroes out of ordinary men. It is that special faith you read about in Hebrews 11. Each of those extraordinary men looked beyond the Eye See (i.e. what their eyes actually saw); they saw beyond! In reality, they ventured into a progression of faith. Perhaps that is our problem: we stop at a low level of faith and cannot seem to reach up, beyond Eye See.
“. . . having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them . . . for they . . . declare plainly that they seek a country . . . if they had been mindful from whence they came out (i.e. Eye See), they might have had opportunity to have returned (the original state) . . . but now they desire a better country, that is heavenly (i.e. seeing through God’s eyes) . . .” (Hebrews 11:13-16)
We all must learn new lessons of faith. We need to look up and beyond this limited world where we live in order to see creative faith in action, pulling the Apostolic Church above Eye See faith into the realm of a heavenly! I want to see beyond Eye See!
ninetyandnine.com
John “Brad” Lambeth is a committed missionary to his life-long mission of reaching Brazil with the Truth.
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