We Need Quarterback Eyes

(Picture attribution at end of article)

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Matthew 6:22-23

Watch any football game and the commentators will talk about the quarterback's ability to see the field. He can have a great arm, but he has to see which receiver is open. He has to read the defense and his own team. He has to have quarterback eyes, the kind that are always looking in the right place, at the right time. If he doesn't, he may have a good arm but won't be a good quarterback.

Christians need to keep their eyes on the field of play. We need to read the Bible, and we need to read the defense. What's happening in our community? What are the real needs? Where are the doorways of opportunity God has opened for us to walk through? We also need to keep our eyes open to what God is doing in our own church. Who He has brought here? What talents are available? Which people are faithful and can be trusted with leadership? Which people need to be trained and developed?

If the enemy can distract us, get us looking at the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, there's no way we will do the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. There are some obvious places we need to not look. If what we're looking at leads us into one of the three categories of sin, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, or the pride of life, then we need to look somewhere else quickly.

There is another place that we don't need to look. We don't need to look at what other churches are doing nearly as much as we do. "Pastor, did you see what First Church is doing on Sundays? We ought to do that. . . Did you see what their youth group is doing? Man, we should try that." There's nothing wrong with seeing what others are doing and letting God use that to stir up our creative and innovative juices. Usually, though, what they're doing isn't what we should be doing.

Instead of looking at what first or second church is doing, we should be looking where Jesus is looking. "Don't you say, 'There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest?' Listen to what I'm telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest." (John 4:35)  Facebook is not the field. Other churches are not the field. The world is the field.

Open your eyes. Look at the field. See the needs. See the opportunities. Look at yourself. Look at your church. What do you already have that you can use to begin to serve the people in the fields, to reach the people in the fields? Where you look controls where you live.

(Photo by Keith Allison, obtained by permission from  https://www.flickr.com/photos/kellbailey/5340620261/in/set-72157625662191367/)