Closing Our Eyes In Order To See

I remember my early days in the contemporary, non-denominational faith. The church I went to in high school was not charismatic by any stretch of the imagination. There were no exorcisms or healings going on on stage, at least not weekly. But in my teenage, newly formed Christian mind, I could not for the life of me understand why everyone had their eyes closed all the time.

During worship, admittedly so, I would spend a lot of time watching the people around me. I was curious how this whole "not a fundamentalist religion, but a relationship with Jesus, but still going to church" thing worked, so I figured I would observe the veterans. All of them, especially the one's who served weekly in the high school ministry had their eyes glued shut. The only time they dared to open them was maybe when the band would whip out an old hymn that no one knew the lyrics to, so they would peek a glance at the words on the screen every now and then, hoping that no one would notice their lack of hymnal memorization.

Then the pastor would come on stage and lead the congregation in prayer, which meant we all were closing our eyes again. And not only that, but then once the sermon begun, anytime the speaker was making his or her point, the veterans around me would make an, "mmm" sound, or maybe a soft "amen", and, you guessed it, close their eyes!

I was fed up. I didn't understand. People were entering a church service and leaving one of their fives senses at the door. I mean, didn't Jesus come so that the blind could see? Aren't we moving a little backwards here, I thought in my fifteen year old mind. The only time I ever closed my eyes in church was when I was drifting off to sleep. And for a while I became extremely jaded towards the veterans with their eyes closed. They were obviously in touch, or pretending to be in touch with something that I clearly did not have the spiritual capacity to understand.

Then one day, and I cannot say exactly when the turning point was, but I decided to try it. I began to really close my eyes during prayer, and I began to ask God to help me focus during worship. I don't have a degree in theology or spiritualism or anything like that, so I don't know how to explain it other than to say that slowly, but surely, I began to feel the presence of God. And not just during church services, but alone in my room. I would close my eyes and ask God to help me focus on Him, and an overwhelming feeling of His presence would ensnare me, right in the middle of my room.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that having your eyes closed is a pre-requisite for getting into the presence of God or being the member of a non-denominational mega-church. But soon enough, I became one of those veterans who I had been so jaded towards before. Realizing they weren't veterans at all, but just a bunch of broken people like me who were hungry for a God who loves them and understands to be nearby.

Over the years, closing my eyes has become a daily practice, along with falling to my knees, or even sometimes laying flat on my face. I have spent hours with my eyes closed, feeling overwhelmed by the presence of God.  But I never asked myself a very important question until recently. Why? Why do I close my eyes during worship? Why did those other veterans when I was younger close their eyes during worship?

The answer came to me one night, and the answer was simple. When we close our physical eyes to pray, God opens our spiritual eyes to receive blessings. When we close our physical eyes to worship, God opens our spiritual eyes to His presence. The physical posture of our bodies has a true effect on the spiritual posture of our hearts. By closing our eyes we are cutting of one of our five senses, but we do it in order to heighten the awareness of our spiritual sixth sense. This is why we fast, we cut off our sense of taste, in order to heighten our sense of God's presence in our lives. The world bombards our physical eyes with about a million stimuli, aka distractions, every minute of every day, so we close our eyes to gain perspective, and to tune out all the competing voices.

Just as the blind man must heighten his sense of touch in order to read brail, we allow ourselves to be physically blind for a moment, in order that we may be spiritually illuminated.

In Need of Something

Each Thursday morning at 7:30am, tucked in the back corner of Coffee Tree Roasters in Shadyside in Pittsburgh PA, you'll find a group of better than average looking young Christian men circled up, telling how much their lives have sucked in the last week, then leaning into what looks like an overly affectionate football huddle with their hands all laid on each other's shoulders, they say, "Amen",  then they leave. This is Ironmen.

Admittedly, I am being somewhat facetious. We don't only talk about how much our lives suck. There is a parade of blessings and praises as well week after week. But this week, literally five minutes ago, we realized that we were all in a similar place.

In short, we were sick of feeling like we weren't being used by God. As bright, confident, sexy young men of God, we were used to being told, "You're gonna do great things," but we were getting tired of asking that age old question, "When?"

A few months ago, I felt the Lord whispering into my soul, prompting me to start a new group blog with about four or five other Christians. The idea being that if I could centralize a group of young Christian's writings on the same blog, then we could use each specific person's network to increase our reach and influence for Christ.

In that moment, a few minutes ago, the ideas connected in my head, and the Ironmen Blog was born. This blog has been born with the hope of serving the kingdom and doing those great things for God, one small post at a time.

Our prayer is that you would find yourself blessed by the words hear, and that the influence of this blog would, as it says in Daniel 12:3, "shine as the stars forever and ever."

Welcome to Ironmen!

jon