Q-The need for the hour, the need for our day, the need in this generation…and of every age? Yes, and we are being made more and more aware in our time of this fundamental and universal need. We could even say that there never was a time when there was a greater need for people who could say, “I see!”… That is the need!
Hope for us hangs on this, that there would be people in this world, this dark world of confusion, self-interest, chaos, tragedy and contradiction; a people that can say, “I see!” In all the geo-political, educational-economic, spiritual-religious, ethnic-environmental, marriage-family, military-energy, youth and leadership crises; there must arise a people that will face these challenges, and meet these needs. And, I dare say, they must be met in a spiritual way with strategic thinking by people of influence that can say, “I see!” It is this “seeing factor” that makes all the difference…and is the great need for our hour.
The initial inspiration for “20Twenty Vision” as a ministry came as God began to open up Jn.9 in the Bible to me. This story of the “man blind from his birth,” arrested my attention, and launched me forth on a mission to “recover spiritual sight.” Elton Trueblood once said, “True recovery is never a matter of going backward for the sake of re-establishing an older pattern, but rather of uncovering (re-discovering) what has been hidden or overlaid and therefore forgotten.” Randall Jarrell said, “Soon we shall know everything the 18th century did not know, and nothing it did, and it will be very hard to live with us.” We have lost some essential things, both culturally and in Christianity, and we desperately need to find them again.
We do not just seek for a new revelation, or even suggest that you have to have extra-Biblical or some new Biblical thing. We do however claim that there is a vast amount of life changing truth and experience in relation to the Spirit of Christ, the Christian life, and the Word of God that we have never seen, which we may yet see. For so many of us, there is a vast realm Divine thought and scriptural insight and purpose that still waits for a deeper and fuller work of the Spirit within us. We are not seeking to change old truths or have new truths, but for spiritual sight into the truth. And perhaps, most of all, what we are actually missing and seeking is experiential Christianity …personal faith and 1st person perspectives that are God centered. With that in mind, I am utterly convinced that this blind man encountering Jesus is a modern day parable, loaded with the principles, problems and purposes that are both prophetic and pertinent to the issues and needs of our day.
It is now time for the Christian church and both its’ leadership and people to “recover the testimony of this blind man.” The Christian life begins here, spiritual growth happens here, mature ministry flows from here; and in all facets, through every season of our faith journey…spiritual life must have this secret in it, “I see!” There is no more pressing need today than for men and women who can stand spiritually as this man stood and proclaim, “One thing I know: I was blind, and now I see!”
To keep us going HIS way, to be a part of what HE is doing in the earth, the LORD is constantly bringing us into situations where it is absolutely necessary for us to see HIM! This provokes us to seek HIM that we might experience and know the LORD in a new and Living way. The whole matter is summed up in us seeing, first that we are sinners that can’t see and don’t really know; and, then by us seeing and knowing Jesus Christ. Oh how we need to be aware of the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives in this way. How often God providentially leads us in and through a series of crises to release fresh vision…a series of crises of seeing and seeing yet again, as the LORD opens our eyes and we can say as never before, “I see!”
It is not just our study, our past experiences, our learning or book knowledge, but … “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the (intimate and personal) knowledge of HIM; the eyes of our heart being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of HIS calling, and what are the riches of the glory of HIS inheritance in the saints (you)!” How effective a witness …how transformative to our world if we once again brought with us this authenticity and authority that is so needed and required today. The need for the hour is for a people to stand and say, “One thing I know: I was blind, but now I see!”
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