Lift Up Your Eyes

Is it success you want? Then——Lift Up Your Eyes

ROBERT H. PIERSON, President, Trans-Africa Division

Jesus was standing be­side Jacob's well in Sa­maria. From His vantage point the Saviour could look out over the fields of waving grain about Him. As the golden sun­light touched the tender green stalks Jesus knew that it was but a few weeks until harvesttime.

Here was an oppor­tunity for the Master to bring home an important lesson to His disciples. Looking upon the groups of people coming to the well for water, Christ discerned another harvest all ready for the reaping.

"Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest?" the Saviour asked His followers. "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields: for they are white already to harvest" (John 4:35).

"Lift up your eyes." Jesus was speaking of a spiritual harvest. One looks down and around to see a temporal harvest. The Mas­ter desired His followers to look up. "Raise your eyes" (Goodspeed). "Raise your sights!" He might well have said, "Behold the great potential of your ministry!"

Jesus discerned what His disciples failed to see. He saw candidates for the kingdom all about Him. Were there obstacles? Were there problems? Jesus' vision reached be­yond the obstacles, beyond the problems that beset His infant cause. Of course, there were difficulties ahead. The Saviour knew a great deal about prejudice and opposition to His cause of truth. In His day Jesus faced many of the same prob­lems that confront us now. People did not readily accent His gospel. They were pre­occupied. They were steeped in national­ism and racialism as they are in our day.

In the face of obstacles and opposition, pride and prejudice, wine and worldliness, Christ's message to His followers was, "Lift up your eyes! Get a new vision! The field is white for the harvest." The Saviour's words were a message of chal­lenge and courage. His was a message to challenge His workers' vision and to test their courage in the face of a difficult task.

What a message for workers in the cause of God today! "Lift up your eyes! Raise your sights! Roll back the horizon of your vision!" Nineteen hundred years later God's messenger to His church echoed the words of her Lord:

Oh, how I seem to hear the voice day and night, "Go forward; add new territory; . . . give the last message of warning to the world. There is no time to be lost."—Evangelism, p. 61.

I must not be far wrong when I say that next to his relationship with God a work­er's value to the cause of present truth is determined by the limit of his vision. The man who thinks a task cannot be done is defeated before he undertakes it. The worker who sees unscalable mountains of difficulty before him will doubtless perish in the valley of mediocrity. He who doubts has already lost the struggle. Conversely, the man of faith and perseverance will fight through the obstacles, turn the tide of defeat, transform the cold water of doubting colleagues into steam and use it to power his vehicle of victory. To see, to believe, is half the battle won.

The church of God needs workers and leaders whose vision is bright and whose courage is strong. There is much in the world today that might well dim the vision and dent the courage of workers who have not yet caught the gleam of mission nor the sense of urgency that must characterize disciples of Christ in these closing, thrill­ing days of earth's history.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," Solomon wrote (Prov. 29:18). While it is true the wise man was speaking of the prophetic vision in this scripture, it is equally true that God's church today needs inspired leaders—men who have caught the vision of a finished work in this generation. Where no such vision chal­lenges them the people must perish short of the kingdom. The remnant church needs leaders with lifted eyes.

"Vision," according to Webster, is "un­usual discernment or foresight." A leader with vision sees souls in now dark counties. He sees church buildings where now there are only vacant lots. To the worker with vision there are no Alps, no Rockies, no Everests! The impediments into dark coun­ties and unentered lands are breached by valiant unfettered faith. Evangelistic ef­forts, schools, hospitals, clinics, church buildings, spring up under the magic of the Master's touch when the man of faith and vision accepts the promises and the challenges of the Omnipotent God.

Of course there are problems! Of course there are obstacles! But men of hallowed vision are not turned from their purpose by hardships and obstacles. In God's strength they move forward to achievement in spite of impediments that would discourage the less intrepid soul. The messenger of the Lord makes it clear that circumstances must not deter the man of vision and faith.

There is a statement from the pen of inspiration that I have kept in the front of my Bible for many years. I needed to read it frequently while attacking the Gi­braltar of unbelief in Southern Asia. What a challenge these stirring words are:

Man can shape circumstances, but circumstances should not be allowed to shape the man. We should seize upon circumstances as instruments by which to work. We are to master them, but should not permit them to master us.

Men of power are those who have been opposed, baffled, and thwarted. By calling their energies into action, the obstacles they meet prove to them posi­tive blessings. They gain self-reliance. Conflict and perplexity call for the exercise of trust in God and for that firmness which develops power.--The Min­istry of Healing, p. 500.

Vision is a divine discontent. It is a holy thing God plants deep in the heart of man that keeps him from becoming satisfied with achievements of the past. He is im­pelled, compelled ever to move forward—in Heaven's strength attempting and ac­complishing greater things for God. Vision never allows a man to stop short of his projected goal. Somehow, by going around or over or under the obstacles he fights through to victory.

I once heard W. R. Beach say, "Vision separates the men who do from those who do not." What a fine definition of vision!

"Raise your eyes!" God speaks to every worker in His last-day movement! "Lift up your eyes! Raise your sights!" Only leaders with clear vision and raised sights can see a finished work in a world riven with tur­moil and strife. Only leaders with "lifted eyes" can discern the great harvest God desires His church to garner despite the trials and the troubles of the last days!

The leaders in God's cause, as wise generals, are to lay plans for advance moves all along the line. —Gospel Workers, p. 351.

Only men with lifted eyes can lay such plans.

We are altogether too narrow in our plans. . We must get away from our smallness and make larger plans. There must be a wider reaching forth for those who are nigh and those who are afar off. —Evangelism, p. 46.

Only men with vision and courage can break the bonds of petty planning and small achievements and roll back the hori­zons of the work. One challenging truth should burn its way into the thinking of every one of us as workers in the cause of God—an organization seldom achieves more than its leaders believe it can. Only infrequently does a local church surpass the vision of its pastor. A conference or a mission field rarely exceeds the measure of faith manifest by its leaders. With one leader the work moves forward. With another the work in the same field stag­nates. The determining factor may well be the measure of the leader's consecrated vision!

A church, a conference, a mission field, reflects the spirit of its leader. I have seen situations fraught with dissatisfaction and unrest. An unwise or incapable leader had created divisions and tensions among the working staff. Relationships with other or­ganizations were coldly strained. Church members and workers alike were restless, almost apprehensive. Morale was at a low ebb. Spiritual fitness suffered as the result of tensions. Goals were unreached. There was no evidence of dynamic faith or con­secrated pride of achievement.

Then I have seen a new leader step in and with God's help transform such a situa­tion almost overnight. The spiritual tide turned. Dissatisfaction disappeared. Divi­sion gave way to unity. A spirit of hal­lowed zeal possessed workers and church members alike. Souls were baptized. Goals were surpassed. Dynamic faith and conse­crated pride took over. The work of God moved forward on every front.

What was the difference? It was differ­ence in the spirit and the vision of the leader. So much depends upon the leader —his spirit, his vision!

"The need of the present hour is for men of vision," I read in a Review and Herald editorial. How true! The cause of God needs men who can dream dreams and then make those dreams come true! Gazing out of the window is not always a waste of time. Leaders need to spend some time gaz­ing out of windows. But we must not limit our accomplishments to idle gazing—oth­erwise we become visionaries rather than men of vision. If souls and churches and clinics and schools and progress do not follow our dreaming, our gazirm is vain. We have but wasted our time. And living as we do in earth's last hour you and I have no time to waste!

And while we are lifting our eyes let us be certain that it is our spiritual sights we are adjusting. What is true of achievement is much more true of spiritual experience. "The church will rarely take a higher stand than is taken by her ministers."—Testimo­nies, vol. 5, p. 227. We cannot lead our people into a latter-rain experience unless we ourselves have felt the mercy drops water­ing our own souls. If we achieve progress without satisfaction, goals without holi­ness, our eyes have been lifted in the wrong direction. If our eyes seek the approbation of man rather than the smile of God's ap­proval there is yet a work of grace to be done in our hearts.

God give us vision! Give us lifted eyes, raised sights! So much depends upon work­ers whose eyes are raised heavenward—above the barren hills of ordinary experi­ence and achievement. What an hour! What a task challenges us! What an awe­some day of opportunity and challenge!

From my friend W. A. Higgins I received the following statement by Dr. Frank Lau­bach, "Heaven trembles lest we may prove too small and too late, lest we be bound by our weak habits when God summons us to great deeds. . . . I'm afraid of some . . . who have neither fire nor vision . . . who begin to see why this might be hard, or unprecedented, or premature if not prop­erly surveyed, or too informal, or too big. The put-on-the-brakes type, the go-slow-type . . . can ruin God's program. 0 ye of little faith, keep your foot off the brake . . . who ever heard of God holding us back? He is impatient. He weeps over us as He did over Jerusalem. We have nothing to fear; we shall not fall when God is pushing us. I tell you what we need to fear, fear the way we are now, for we aren't good enough, hot enough, daring enough, far-visioned enough, for this splendid hour."

Let us all pause a moment and ask our­selves the question, "How is my vision?"


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ROBERT H. PIERSON, President, Trans-Africa Division

February 1965

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