1 Peter 5:8-9 English Standard Version

⁸ Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

Are things all that much different today than when this warning was written? While the situations may be very different today, the primal nature of man has not varied at all. Our myopic vision of life tends to think that our present circumstances are somehow immune to the dangers of the past. If we think that way then the cure to the ills of the past might also be seen as ineffective.

Breaking down everything that is happening in the world right now to the basic principle of the fall of man from grace, then the cure to all our ills is still the same. Listen to the multitude of phone calls we get every day and hear those offering a fix to our problems. The truth of those offers is based on human nature. Our fears are preyed upon every day. We begin to think that our lives must be falling apart if we have this many people trying to fix our problems.

If they are not tapping into our fears they are tugging at our humanity. Apparently all the ills of the whole world can be fixed if we donate only $19 a month. For only 64 cents a day, you can save whatever they are supporting at the moment. Isn’t it strange how they all came up with the same dollar amount?

Peter’s warning to be sober-minded and watchful still applies. Staying firm in our faith is still the best solution for all our fears and cares.

Ephesians 1:18 English Standard Version (ESV) having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

Be cautious about what you see here. We can get so involved with seeing our calling and understanding His inheritance that we overlook the issues of the eyes of our hearts. These eyes are enlightened by the presence of the Holy Spirit to the change of heart that has taken place.

Ezekiel 36:26 English Standard Version (ESV) And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The desires of this new heart are vastly different from those of the old dead person that was baptized into the death of Christ. Being born again into His resurrected life is a concept our minds have trouble visualizing. That is why the passage says eyes of the heart, not eyes of the mind.

The issue of the stone heart is one of stubborn self-interest, one of rebellion. Having a changed heart means it is willing if not eager to obey God’s calling in our lives.

Up until the point in time when we accepted Christ’s Lordship, we made our own way in the world. We made all the decisions by whatever standards we were willing to accept in our rational minds. Our hearts looked to self-interest. For many, if it felt good we did it. For some of us that lifestyle brought consequences that resulted in an earnest desire for change. We became unhappy with the results of our decisions.

Seeing with this new heart is not instinctual. We have to get to know that heart in order to understand what it is capable of seeing.