Our eyes give us one of our most precious and important senses: sight. It’s truly wonderful to see with our own eyes the great things that God has created.
But there is one big problem that many of us have with our eyes: how we use our sight. Many of us look at the wrong things. Although some things that we look at, watch, and observe do not necessarily lead us to sin or are sinful in nature, we should be careful what we allow our eyes to gaze at.
Entry Point
Our eyes are both the steering wheel of our body and the entry points to our soul. Whatever we see and gaze at fills our imagination and thoughts after a while. Most of these things become what influences us. Consider what the Lord Jesus Himself said in Matthew 6:22-23, saying,
“Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!” (NLT)
From here we see that our eyes provide “light” for ourselves. What we look at fills us. Thus, our eyes serve as entry points for whatever we see.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
There’s a saying among computer programmers, “garbage in, garbage out.” This simply means that whatever they type in when they write programming code, it simply comes back. In the same way, what we feed our minds and souls with through our eyes become the thoughts that we think and consequently, the things we talk about.
“For of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks,” Jesus said in Luke 6:45.
Think about it. What we watch fills our hearts and minds. When we see someone do something good, we’re inspired to think of good things to do to others, and eventually we do these good things we think of.
If, on the other hand, we keep looking at things we shouldn’t be looking at (such as porn or looking at another person lustfully), we will fill our minds with such wrong things and we will look for more. Soon we could find ourselves doing something we would regret. Hopefully, we don’t get to that point.
Be Careful With Your Eyes
Dear reader, I’d like to encourage you to keep your eyes for the Lord’s purposes. You can sin with your eyes, and fill your mind with sinful thoughts through what you watch. Those eyes of yours are included in the list of what Christ died for; honour Him by using your eyes honourably.
