Look

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” ~ 1 Samuel 16:7 NLT

Due to the struggles we were having getting Savannah ready for school, we started a new routine. Although God has walked us successfully through that season, we’ve continued our new routine. Every morning, we pray an interactive prayer with our girls, asking God to anoint us: touching our heads, we ask Him to anoint our minds; wigging our ears, we ask Him to anoint our ears; and it continues for our eyes, mouths, heart, hands, and feet. The whole prayer is important, but over the past few days, God has shown me the importance of praying for our eyes. We ask God to open our eyes to see people as He sees them and to see into the spiritual realm—to see the Truth—in every situation.

Yesterday morning, I was in a funk and couldn’t shake it, so I opened my journal and began reading through the Truths God has given me over the years, praying that He’d open my eyes to what I needed to know and see. And then I spotted it! In June, 2010, God revealed Himself to me as El Roi, “God of seeing, the God who opens our eyes.”

In 1 Samuel 16, God commanded Samuel to stop mourning Saul’s fall from anointed leadership and to go anoint God’s chosen king. God warned Samuel look—or see—not with human judgement, but through the spiritual eyes of the Lord. The “Lord looks” is the Hebrew word, “ra’ah” meaning to see or behold and is the root word of Roi, the name of God meaning “to see.” My prayer for us today is that God would anoint our eyes, so that we’d see as He sees, in all situations.

©Heather Potts 2016