“Normal man sees God through the eyes of the world. A reformed (born again) man sees the world through the eyes of God.”

The Normal man sees God through the world. He bargains with God using the things available to him. If the man is poor he might offer $10 to God and if he’s rich he would offer $1000. Although he is “offering” it to God, he sees it as a transaction to get God to do what he wants. He thinks that if he offers God money, or give to the poor, or climb mountains as piety, or offers up something that is dear to him, then God would be pleased. This is how we normally please a person and we consider God to be another being like us who has needs to be fulfilled. The Holy Bible says, the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord (paraphrased Ps 24:1 NKJV). If everything belongs to the Lord, then what are we going to bring to Him in exchange?

He also believes that he can please God by being good to his fellow human beings. The notion is that his works and acts of righteousness would please God in the grand scheme of things to conjure the Lord. Whereas God says that “all our righteousness are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6 NKJV)”. In essence, man cannot bribe God with anything. The only thing that you can offer to God is your heart. As we see in Rev 3:20 (NKJV), “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

He wants to reign in our hearts in order to do the work which he has thought for us, to give us a future and a hope (paraphrased Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV) and this is unique to each and every child of God who are called “according to his purpose.”

A Reformed man, on the other hand, sees the need of humankind; he sees his fellow beings as God sees them. He recognizes how lost they are from God just as he once was. His heart beats after the heart of God. He recognizes his emptiness and lack; knows well that he cannot satisfy the hunger of the world; and so, he goes to his best friend (God) for 3 loaves of bread even at midnight. He runs where no paths have been trodden. He does not satisfy the status quo because he knows that his Savior’s message needs to reach places where none other had gone. He prefers to step into the unknown rather than to be at home on common ground. His life was transformed because he saw who God Was, who God Is and who God Will be. He has also seen what the world has offered, what the world is offering and what the world could or would offer. He recognizes the frailty of man and his attempts to cover it up with fig leaves which dries up when the Sun of Righteousness rises up. He recognizes the need of a Savior Who has already paid the price of his sins, and has purchased him by the pure precious blood of Jesus Christ. He runs after the heart of God, and experiences God when he does His will.

Where do we Christians stack up? Are we reformed or normal? Do we see God through the world or the world through God? Is our heart set on things above or on earthly things? As it says in Mathew 6:22,23 (NKJV), “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”. Let the “Light of Life” shine in and through our lives into the darkness of our hearts and of those around us. Highlight: A reformed man runs after the heart of God.