Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Hebrews 12:2 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God”

I want to you imagine yourself looking over the grasslands of Southeast Asia. I want you to imagine a tiger strolling around the wide grassland. All of a sudden, the tiger quickly squats to the ground, hiding beneath the tall grass. The tiger locks his eyes on a zebra grazing within the tall grass. Without breaking eye contact, the tiger quietly crawls towards the zebra. Thinking that he heard something, the zebra quickly moved to a different location. Even though the zebra moved, the tiger kept his eye on his prey. When the time was right and his eyes locked onto his target, the tiger let out a mighty roar and pounced on the zebra.

What was the point of that scenario? Specifically, I want to talk about the tiger’s eyes. When the tiger was hunting for his prey, his eye contact on the zebra was unbreakable, no matter how many times the zebra moved. What would have happened if the tiger had no eye contact on the zebra? Ultimately, the tiger would have missed the zebra and would have gone home without dinner. Without eye contact, none of the following actions would have any effect on the zebra.

In the Martial Arts, eye contact in a crucial part of what we do. Marital Artists need to use all of their senses in order to be successful. Out of all of the senses, the sense of sight is one of the most important ones. A martial artist can have some of the best moves and techniques out there when defending from an enemy. However, if the marital artist has no idea where his enemy is at, none of the moves will be effective and they will be defeated.

It’s the same in our spiritual life. There is a greater thing that we all should be looking towards. That greater thing is God. There is a numerous amount of benefit when we seek God out and look for the path that He has designed for us, individually. We are even called to seek God in scripture. In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus talks about how when we ask, seek, and knock on God’s door, we will receive and God will let us into His kingdom. Sounds like an easy thing to do, right? Well, because of our sinful nature, we tend to walk blindly and lose sight of God. Because the sin from our past to present, we have lost sight of God’s law. What makes it worse is that we can try our best to seek God alone, but no matter how hard we try, we cannot see God due to our own spiritual blindness. However, there is good news that I want to share; and that news is about Jesus. When Jesus came down from heaven, He became our eyes that looked up towards God. He was the one who, like the lion, had His eyes set on the cross. He knew that hanging on the tree would take away our spiritual blindness, so that through Him, we can see God again. Our theme verse perfectly demonstrates that. Praise God, knowing that He sent His Son to allow us to fix our sight on Him.