Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
Summary: Life offers many choices when it comes to what we look at. What we look at has a profound impact on what we do. What we do can influence where we spend eternity.
There are a lot of distractions in life. I have to laugh at myself anymore because I don’t even have to go outside of the house to find distractions these days. Just walking from one room to another is enough to dislodge whatever thought was in my head and cause me to stand there wondering what I was looking for. But personal limitations aside, there are a lot of things vying for our attention these days.
I have known people who grew up on a farm. One friend of mine was raised on a ranch in North Dakota. The “town” he lived in was miles away from the farm, and entertainment was scarce. Being someplace where they had entertaining distractions was considered a luxury.
Imagine every day being the same, no internet, no radio, no news except for what the neighbors knew and what was printed in the weekly rag that passed for a local newspaper. Quiet, peaceful, and … boring.
Some people would give their eyeteeth to live in such a place. Others would give the same and more to get out of that place and be where the action is. The danger of “action” is that there are people in the world who will take advantage of the boredom and curiosity of others. Such people lure others into situations that can have frightening and fatal consequences.
Even more dangerous are the temptations that come from Satan directly. These are the kind that are interactive with the world. Maybe we would be perfectly happy spending time with our family or reading the Bible. Along the way, something catches our eye, and then we have to investigate.
Temptation.
It never announces itself. Like a worm on a fishhook, we see something that attracts our eye, but we miss the danger. Solomon warns us against “sinful men” (Proverbs 1:10), the “wayward woman” (Proverbs 2:16), pride (Proverbs 3: 7), and other temptations. What are we to do?
The answer, it seems, is more than “mind your own business.” Solomon advises us to be careful of what our eyes see. How is that possible?
There is a dance in the words of Proverbs, between metaphor and reality. What path are we on? If we know where we are going, Solomon’s advice is quite simple. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Do not allow yourself to look to the right or the left (Proverbs 4:27).
For us today, Solomon’s advice is simple: Keep our eyes on Jesus. Not on the world’s distractions, not on the temptations that Satan throws our way, but only on Jesus.
Application: Yes, you already know what it is. 🙂 Keep your eyes on Jesus!
Food for Thought: What do we give up when we keep our eyes “straight ahead”?
What do we give up when we keep our eyes “straight ahead”?
When I was a teenager I used to hear a lot of advice from my grandmother about temptation in the world. Being a teenager I thought I knew more than my grandmother, and literally used to think “how can I know what to stay away from if I don’t know what’s out there?” I was missing the point; it wasn’t that I was to travel down the road of life blind, but rather that I could recognize what could be sin in my life and not gravitate towards it. Sort of like as we travel down the road of life, we can recognize a large hole on the path, and not steer the cart towards it, but rather recognize it, go around it, and “Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.” 30+ years later I look back and understand that all I really did by allowing myself to be distracted by temptation is cause myself way more pain than necessary. The cost of giving into temptation was great, and any thing I gained from it could have been given to me in time by God on His terms, and would have been everlasting.
Matthew 16:26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
Thanks for sharing Chris!!
Chris,
You remind me of when I was teaching my youngest son how to drive. We were going down the highway and there was something on the road. It was small but I was worried it could damage the tire. I blurted out, “Don’t hit that thing” and then watched mesmerized while my son ‘froze’ and hit the thing square on. We survived (thankfully!) and no damage to the tire, but it was such a good example of how we operate. We gravitate towards what we are looking at.
What do we give up?
What do we value?
If we look straight ahead, we value God, Jesus, humility, truth, taking advice, giving respect, giving love.
If we prefer turning left and right, we value ourselves, pride, listening to lies, doing things our way, getting respect, receiving love.
When you pick one of the above, you give up the other. But this world is muddy, so you’ll still have a little of the other path in your life.
For those looking straight ahead, following Jesus on the narrow path, that’s a very frustrating thing to have to keep pushing the other ‘options’ out of our sight, out of our hearing and accidentally looking away. It’s annoying to trip off the path and have to trudge back onto it. But Jesus is still there, holding out his hand to help us return.
For those looking right and left, on the broad path, well, it can also be frustrating. Why keep bringing up this God character?? But it’s grace that they cannot be fully without God’s presence. They keep getting the opportunity to choose life, until there’s no more time left for them.
Matthew 7:13-14
Romans 1:20-21
Proverbs 1:7
Thank you, A –
Nicely said!
Thank you for the devotion and I appreciate the comments before mine Chris and A.
Just to take a slightly different angle – if we keep our eyes straight ahead on the Lord, we can eliminate unnecessary stress and we can give up control to the Lord and receive the peace that comes with that. It will get our focus where it needs to be. Philippians 4: 6 – 9.
In 2 Chronicles 20: 12, righteous King Jehoshaphat is facing an invading army that is superior in size and strength. He prays to the Lord confessing that he and his people don’t know what to do, “but our eyes are on you.” That is a great place to be. Even without giving the rest of the story we all know how it ended.
There is great peace in keeping our eyes straight on the Lord.
Thanks Rich!
So we give up all those opportunities for worry and anxiety that come with letting our eyes wander? Seems like a fair trade to me!
🙂
03-02-2022, Proverbs 4:25, What do we give up when we keep our eyes “straight ahead”?
The eyes of the heart or mind, is the organs of spiritual perception, which may be enlightened, opened by the Holy Spirit. We must then strive to become single-minded as we pursue spiritual life, over physical death by keeping our eyes straight ahead, on Jesus.
The eyes of our heart have become enlightened so we may know the hope to which He has called us, and the riches of His glorious inheritance as His holy people. We fix our eyes on the eternal unseen, rather than the temporary seen and are kept in perfect peace as we trust in Him rather than our own understanding by acknowledging Him in all our ways.
Ephesians 1:18, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Isaiah 26:3, Proverbs 3:5-6
To receive this, we must give up our love for this world, all we own, our love for ourselves, all physical attachments. Everything that would draw our attention away from God must be seen for what it is and not allowed to divert our focus as we seek a growing relationship with our Lord through Humble obedience to His will. A lifetime goal we will never achieve. But we try.
1 John 2:15-17, Luke 14:33, Matthew 16:24, Luke 14:25-35
Ron,
So God draws us to him, but it is our job to stay focused on him.
Yes … it is a lifetime challenge. And so very worthwhile!
Yep, well summarized!