{"id":709,"date":"2021-01-02T00:57:42","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T00:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/?p=709"},"modified":"2020-12-30T21:58:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T21:58:32","slug":"lord-open-our-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/lord-open-our-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord, open our eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>\u00a0January 2-3<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Lord, open our eyes \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d the prophet answered. \u201cThose who are with us are more than those who are with them.\u201d And Elisha prayed, \u201cOpen his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.\u201d <strong>2 Kings 6:16, 17<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When we trust in God to do exceedingly and abundantly, we are activating our faith muscle. In learning how to stand firm in our everyday lives, we can become like Elisha. Elisha was a great Old Testament prophet who did more miracles than any other prophet in the Scriptures. How did he do it? Because he was able to see through situations. Elisha was a prophet of God with the ability to see beneath the surface and to see what no one else saw. Elisha saw greatness where other people saw mediocrity. He saw potential where other people only saw problems.<\/p>\n<p>In 2 Kings, when the king of Aram set out to capture the prophet Elisha his troops surrounded the city. Elisha\u2019s servant came to him to tell him they were in trouble but Elisha responded with great faith and said \u2018do not be afraid\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Fear cripples when we respond with our natural instincts and try to change or avoid the situation.\u00a0 Sadly, worrying tells God that he has less influence on our decisions, plans, and lives than whatever it is that we\u2019re fearing.\u00a0 Then worrying robs us of confidence in God and before you know it, we\u2019re caught blaming God or cursing the situations we find ourselves in. What we really need to fear when fear sets in is pray that God will open our eyes. Elisha prayed for his servant\u2019s eyes to be opened, and the servant saw that there was an army of angels surrounding their enemies. This is the essence of bravery: standing firm and refusing to be moved by trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Each day we wake up and feel like we\u2019re surrounded by different enemies. Sometimes, God doesn\u2019t appear to be visibly working. But when we see it through, God promises that we will see His love and faithfulness. May you find strength in the coming year to remain firm on what you know to be true \u2013 Gods Word. Our help is already here and His name is Jesus!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0January 2-3 Lord, open our eyes \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d the prophet answered. \u201cThose who are with us are more than those who are with them.\u201d And Elisha prayed, \u201cOpen his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.\u201d 2 Kings 6:16, 17 When we trust in God to do exceedingly and abundantly, we are activating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}