The highest level of seeing is not just seeing Jesus in everything but seeing everything through Jesus, through His eyes. This can only come from abiding in Him. This must always be our primary devotion.
As new creations, we’re called to live increasingly in the realm of the Spirit. Even more important than having Jesus with us in the work we are doing here is that we enter the heavenly places to be seated with Him on His throne, doing the work that He is doing. It’s not just about being there but about abiding in Him.
As has been said, “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” The main thing is to abide in Him, not just to get Him to join us in what we’re doing. Our goal is to see with His eyes, hear with His ears, and understand with His heart. This happens when we abide in Him.
Jesus said in Luke 8:18, “Be careful how you hear.” It’s not just what we hear but how we hear. It’s also not just what we see but how we see. To see through our own eyes is to see with many distortions from our good or bad experiences, good or bad teaching, etc. If we see through His eyes, we will see with love, because He is love. Abiding in Him, we will see through the perspective of the cross and through His perspective as the Son.
We’re told that we must see His glory with an “unveiled face” to be changed by His glory. So, we must have all of our veils removed to see clearly. These veils are our own prejudices from our own life experiences and environments. These will distort our vision and can have us seeking to make Him into our image—the most destructive presumption of all.
As written in James 3:1, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.” As teachers, we can convey to others wrong judgments, human wisdom, and errors. So, the discipline for teachers is more severe than for others so that we will only speak His truth by the Spirit.
Many perceive the Lord as our Healer but often as the One who will take away our pain. If we just want the pain to be taken away, we are too immature to be teachers. The Lord’s discipline is not just so He can remove the pain or the errors in our thinking and beliefs, but so He can remove from us what is causing the pain and the errors.
Just as most medications today seek to alleviate symptoms and pain rather than to deal with what is causing the symptoms and pain, this is true of many ministries. More than addressing the pain or symptoms, we need the problem that is causing the pain and symptoms to be healed. That is true healing.
Deception is not just believing wrong doctrines, but the worst and most costly deception of all is not being in God’s will. Pain is a message that there is something wrong. So, when we just try to get rid of the pain, we are literally “killing the messenger” instead of dealing with a more important issue.
A clear example of how such shallowness can cause greater problems was on the news recently. A Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member was being interviewed. Part of her platform was to do away with the police, jails, and prisons. The interviewer asked her (paraphrasing) that if she was assaulted and raped, would she not want her assaulter captured and removed from the streets so that this would not happen again to her or to others? Then, she was asked who would capture the assailant if there were no police and where they would put him if there were no jails or prisons.
The candidate obviously had not thought this through and tried to escape the conundrum by saying she did not answer hypothetical questions. Aren’t virtually all questions candidates are asked hypothetical? How else can anyone understand what their policies or platform will be if they’re elected? Let us also beware lest we promote a gospel and teaching of Christ so superficially.
© 2026 Rick Joyner. All Rights Reserved.
