Levi Lusko — Through The Eyes of a Lion

the Bible has this amazing passage in 2nd Corinthians 4 and if you would take a moment and turn there and if you don't have a Bible no worries 2nd Corinthians 4 is where we're gonna jump in in just a second but I want to just kind of throw something on your radar that maybe just maybe it's possible that what you see every day is not everything that's there could it be that you could look at something and have looked at it a thousand times but that that maybe just maybe what's really there and what you see that's there are two different things is that possible you're like no can't fool me right okay well here's just a cheesy example jumping in take the FedEx logo you've seen it probably a billion times in your life right is always on airplanes always on trucks going by it's an amazing story how it was done because there were two hundred different designs that were submitted when this was chosen as the new logo because the old logo was Federal Express some of you are old enough to remember those days but then the customer base began speaking about to the company and using the word FedEx and it was kind of irritating to the company at first okay that's actually not our name so but then they realized people loved the word so much they would even UPS stuff and say FedEx I'm a FedEx to you that right it just means I'm gonna get it into there quickly and so they decided to accommodate the customers way of speaking about it so by the way there's power and what you speak there's power and the words that come out of your mouth that can change things right billion dollar company it changed because of how people talk about how do you talk about your life how do you talk about your how do you talk about your relationship how do you talk about your day how do you talk about this service you'll get out of it exactly what you put into it how we speak matters okay so this logo gets brought in along with five others there was 200 design only five got brought to the company that means a hundred and ninety five of them weren't good enough were they failures no they were just stepping stones on the way to greatness so what in your life are you giving up on because it's not working you just need to work a little harder you just need to go back to the drawing board a few more times that song maybe it's there it's using you keep going right let it go from frozen how many of y'all parents hate that song right there was like seventeen rejections before they got onto that song they weren't rejections it was just the opportunity to produce the thing that God had inside of you just keep chipping away just keep so this one gets turned in keep it up for a moment please the logo gets turned in with five others Fred Smith CEO of FedEx he walks up to the all five of a mocked up on the on the drawing room board he walked up and said I want that one that's our new logo right there that's the logo for FedEx I like that one and they said why there's others that are better he said I like the one with the arrow in it his team was confused I didn't get it and he got up and pointed to between the E and the X where there's a perfectly formed between the E and the X between the e'en between them how many of you still can't see it you're confused there's always one between the E and the X there is a perfectly formed arrow now listen you're probably thinking I tricked you and I put that out that arrow has been there every single time you've ever seen that logo now honestly in God's house if you tell a lie you're going straight to hell how many of you have never noticed the arrow before in your life now let's now first of all I apologize because I've screwed you forever because you will never not see that arrow I don't even see the logo anymore I just see an arrow going by arrow air you'll probably get in a car wreck in next month like trying to tell your copilot about drunk driving but every time you've ever seen that logo it's been there the arrow just staring at you just hiding in plain sight and that my friends enough with a logo I'm probably gonna get sued anyway for showing I don't got permission to show that to you don't put that on the podcast vous Church okay listen it's possible that what you're seeing in your life and what you think you see are two different things and if you'll jump in with me at second Corinthians four Paul tells us that we need to be very carefully challenged what we see versus what's actually there he's describing how he goes through hardship he's describing how he goes through difficulty but doesn't give up because Paul was the kind of a who no matter how much of a beating he took and he took considerable amount of beatings I mean everyday probably just like wake up get beat up wake up get rocked with with with get stoned with rocks not weed guys but he would get stoned repeatedly with with with rocks being thrown at him one time he got he got beaten till he was dead but then wood would just get up and keep preaching again and he one time he's preaching a sermon people tried to assassinate him there to let him out of the city wall in a basket he got shipwrecked and then he tried to build a fire to warm the other prisoners who were on the beach and and while building a fire to warm prisoners get this a viper jumps out of the fire and bites him and just hangs there from his arm no one did anything no one did anything and you know Paul did he shook the Viper into the fire then it came from I got a couple thoughts they're not my sermon but every time you try and do something that will light up the night the enemy will bring an intense fight and the secret is to shake the snake into the same fire that it came from so you get criticism for doing something great for God so you get pushback so you get so you get rumors told about you because of something you're doing they let me tell you something the people who have given up on their dreams will always hate on you for walking out yours and so what you got to do is you guys got to learn to shake it off into the same listen listen shake it off and then burn ten times fought higher bird ten times hotter don't let it stop you alright so so that was the kind of stuff Paul would go through but but people in his life were like dude how do you even keep going how do you not give up and Paul answers their question here in second Corinthians four looking for 16 on-screen says that is why we never give up you're like why here we go though our bodies are dying our spirits are being renewed every day for our present troubles are small and won't last very long now if you were interrupting if you were the sort to interrupt John would never do that I would interrupt Paul right here and say what are you even talking about your troubles are small they're huge the stuff you go through haven't even lied about haven't you been abandoned haven't you had people who said they were always gonna be there leave haven't you been stoned to death haven't you been whipped haven't you been flogged Paul your trials are huge and they last all the time and Paul would say no they're small they won't last very long and that's because he wasn't staring at what he was going through he was seeing something that the human eye couldn't see something that only God could see that is what the trials are producing and why were the trials deemed not lasting very long when they took up his entire life because Paul didn't define his entire life as just the years that he lived on this earth oh that 70 years if you don't get hit by a bus 80 years if something doesn't go tragically wrong cutting you down in the prime of your life which happens to us all the time Paul saw that it's just part of the story Paul happened to believe something crazy that if you believe in Jesus Christ that when you die you will live and your life goes on forever and a whole lot longer than however you get on this earth even if you get 80 he happened to believe that ten thousand years after dying when he's standing in heaven singing God's praise he will have more days to sing God's praise than when he first begun his life was hidden with Christ and God and he knew that when Christ appeared that he would appear with him in glory and get a brand new resurrection body just like Jesus got when he rose them out of that grave and so he's looking at 10,000 years that he has to look forward to someone said we shouldn't call what happens after we die the afterlife that we should call what happens right now during life the pre life because our real life begins one minute after we die doesn't make what happens on this earth matter lesson it makes it matter even more actually but but Paul would laugh you're like Paul your trials are huge and they last forever he's like oh oh that it's like the Nottie scene in Fight Club it's just a second like life here seven years he when you compare it to 10,000 God it'll turn huge huge huge huge tornadoes of problems into small potatoes that's what it'll do for you when you have this kind of right perspective so so he says they don't last forever they that's this is a tiny little thing Rep Akito right but notice this but they produce yet verse 17 yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever if you're in Christ your trials not gonna last forever but what the child does inside of you that you'll get to keep forever so the beautiful diamond that the pressure of this life is creating out of the coal of your situation you won't keep the trial forever but you'll keep the glory that God produces inside of you through your trial so your hardship that's just an agent of change but after you get to heaven the gates there are gonna strip you of all the agents of change and you only get to keep the change that it produced and that you'll get a keep forever so Paul says because of that verse 18 we don't look at the troubles we can see now rather we fix our gaze I love that we choose where we look we get to pick what we we stare at we choose to look to fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen Paul says I choose to focus on the arrow inside the logo for the things we see now will soon be gone if all you look at is dollars and cents and logos and square footage and followers and likes your gaze is broken you gotta fix what you're staring at by fixing it on things that cannot be seen and counted and purchased and stolen and so you gotta hide your treasure in a place where moth and rust but the we're just reading the Bible here guys but the things we cannot see will last forever Eugene Peterson said once reality is mostly made up of what you cannot see what we touch feels so real it's tactile I can touch it I can buy it I can wear it I can I can use it I can drive it I feel so real but it's the immaterial that currently now is a dimension in which we can operate in only God does that is what is actually real that is what it's actually concrete that is actually what it's going to last forever and my prayer is that God would help us to understand that and to live out of that would you would you join me praying father we ask for you to fill us with your spirit we asked for a supernatural thing to occur that would take place even now as we consider what we just read because it is is truly so simple and yet so complex it is truly so so so formative and and and so life-changing if we would just grasp what we just read there everything would be different so I pray for these precious people I'll pray for those in the additional seating I thank you for what you've done here and thank you for the way it's just you getting started and we believe that what we're about to read and experience and and learn to walk out it could change everything for us it could change everything for South Florida and we pray this in your name Amen I want to talk to you today about how to see your life through the eyes of a lion how to see life through the eyes of a lion it's a metaphor that stands for looking at life through a telescope of faith looking at life through the right lens you realize the lens that you use it could mean the difference between seeing and not seeing I'm wearing contact lenses right now without without them I wouldn't be able to see any of you but the lens that we we choose to use McCants if it's the wrong lens if I put your contact lens in I would say it's not just having a lens it's having the right lens on April 24 1990 the United States Space Agency NASA they sent there at the time largest most powerful most versatile space telescope into orbit that had ever been conceived by man the vision was to have the eyes in the sky that would help us to see what telescopes on earth no matter how powerful they are would never be able to see you see any telescope on our planet to see the heavens has to look through the Earth's atmosphere that surrounds us like a blanket scientists say that looking through the atmosphere effectively is like looking through a piece of dirty stained glass you if you look through dirty stained glass you wouldn't see the outside world you would see it through colored by distorted by change by the lens that's what the atmosphere does for us so for example that song that moms around the world sing to their babies at night twinkle how does that go I can't ever remember twinkle little star stop it it's lies lies I only hear any of that the stars do not twinkle they are steady they are constant they are unchanging they only appear to twinkle because of shifting pockets of gas within the Earth's atmosphere so again what you're seeing and what's there two completely different things so Hubble would fly around the planet at a distance of 366 miles above ours our earth and it would fly around the planet once every 96 minutes so every time a Marvel movie ends its made a pass around around our planet but it's sitting above the atmosphere at in what's called low-earth orbit so it could see the heavens unobstructed and report back to us what it's seeing and we could have an accurate understanding of the solar system and the galaxy and the the wonders of the heavens and believe it or not the original plan called for Hubble taking pictures on some sort of film cartridge and then jettisoning the can into the ocean somewhere and then we'd have to just go find it can you imagine how frustrating that job would be like I'm just trying to find this can of film right but that would only be half the half the way to victory because it was 1990 so they'd still have to find a Walgreens to develop the pictures guys that's that was a struggle remember that how different it was I'm I have an 11-year old daughter and I was trying to tell the other day about how I had to have more faith as a child you take a picture you don't know for a week whether you got anything good I probably somewhere still have a can of film ready for me to pick I might have even checked the doubles box right it's just a blurry blurry my finger was in front of the shutter dang yeah right they see a picture right away right away and we keep them all you're right like why because we want our phones to run slow that's why we know so so here here's the thing so they figured out these are the jokes people they figured out how how Hubble was gonna be able to take pictures and in a real time beam them back to us here on earth they were excited about that so they shoot this thing up into the air it cost 1.5 billion dollars discovery takes it out there sets it free it's just floating around it's taking pictures and when they load it up the initial images from Hubble they were horrified to discover look at this that the pictures were all blurry completely and totally useless they went back to the math and they figured out they had made a mistake when they made Hubble's lens guys Hubble needed glasses not a good look for a supersonic spake telescope face telescope you know say like I'm really good at flying around yeah Hubble you had one job I need you to see really far that's really all we built you for pal 1.5 billion dollars and so they didn't know what to do because Hubble had a lens issue the primary optical component was the wrong depth and so it caused Hubble to be nearsighted Space Shuttle Endeavor brought the solution they took an enormous contact lens to outer space this is honestly the the solution they built an enormous contact lens with the same air backwards inverted and they thought if we put it on in front it could cancel it out and that's exactly what happened and so once this new lens was in place they fired it up once again and well the proof is in the thanks Hubble come on let's just give God some praise because he made that and he built you with this much passion detail and excellence you are fearfully and wonderfully maybe speak that over a little baby Wilkerson right now God has been dreaming of how he would use him since the beginning of the world Steve and Kobe once said we don't see the world as it is we see the world as we are and that means we could see something every day of our lives but not have a clue what we're looking at when Hubble was sending blurry pictures to Walgreens it wasn't the universe's fault it wasn't the aurora borealis fault it wasn't the Milky Way galaxy's fault y'all Hubble had a lens problem so here's my question what lens do you choose to use to view pain that you go through when you go through something hard like Paul when you go through something horrible when you go through something scary what is your go-to lens to look at it through how do you interpret what you're facing my premise and the reason I wrote a book called through the eyes of Lyon is that we need to choose to use the lens called faith in order to make sense of what we see Lions have spectacular vision they can see six times better than us so whereas in the back row I can't tell that bill is that Sue is that Johnny a lion would say I know exactly what that is that's lunch right there right Lions Lions see look at this picture of line lines see so well through the eyes of a lion they see so well for a number of reasons my favorite is the fact that they have a white stripe under each eye and God put that there for the exact opposite reason an athlete wears black under their eye we're in the black we see the ability for the Sun to not come into the eye as much lions hunt at night with a very faint light but God put the white there so all light that's available will come straight into their eyes come on heaven open up the eyes of our soul would you dilate the pupils of our heart would you give us the wisdom of spiritual revelation with the eyes of our understanding be enlightened with all the light that's there hiding in plain sight come straight into our eyes that through the the faith that you've chosen to give to give to us would would it enable us to to face the impossible but but to rise up in a supernatural way in this life we need this we needed this and we learned this the hard way as a family because of what we faced that we never expected in 2012 we planted a church ten and a half years ago and you heard a little bit about that and and as the campuses began to grow church began to grow our family began to grow and our second born daughter was a little girl named Linea Linea at the age of five had an asthma attack five days before Christmas we're wrapping up Christmas presents so excited about the happiest time of the year and all of a sudden Linea began to be short of breath now I've had asthma since the third grade I was having like 19 asthma attacks today we're working out with your pastor because it's activity induced right and and I should have just pulled my inhaler out and ran away that no one's going to judge you right hey but I didn't and anybody else have asthma here you guys house okay experience that now this is your moment don't raise it up halfway it's like we know sticky back yeah asthmatic you're proud right hey let's get together after service and puff our albuterol guys why would you say that it's highly inappropriate probably illegal but hey we have prescriptions we're fine so normally you get you get wheezy you take a puff and you feel better that's how it's always been for me it's how it's been for my oldest daughter Olivia and that's how it was for Linea but five days before Christmas this asthma attack that medicine didn't change a bit and instead of breathing better after she took it she began to breathe worse and soon she stopped breathing altogether now all of a sudden were in the midst of an emergency that we didn't see coming I put her on the kitchen counter we began to call 9-1-1 and frantically pray as I began to do CPR but long story short and traumatic made horribly horribly oversimplified my daughter died in my arms five days before Christmas as we called on Jesus who made the Sun stand still to stop the Sun in the sky and it's sat in front of us as we trusted Christ who rose from the dead on the third day and caused gyrus his daughter to breathe again who one time what Elijah would put his mouth in his face and his hands over a child and pray for life to come back and it would happen Jesus who who again and again gave miracles out and did the impossible and as we called with all the faith we could muster for God to do the impossible and he chose to say yes to our prayers but to answer it in a very different way we asked for more time with her we asked for her life to be saved here on earth and what he chose to do instead was to give her ultimate life eternal life forever life as Jesus sent angels to pick up her soul and to bring her to heaven to bring her to paradise to be with him where she is today leaving us here on a cold planet that we hated a bit more because of the fact that our daughter was no longer on it we believe that that moment for her was was when eternal life began was when true joy like like no one could ever fathom began to play out around her she was transported to a place of of Perpetual summer where there's no shadow and no need to say goodbye but we were left here to pick out caskets and to pick a funeral home and to choose where the service would be that would take place the day after Christmas and rummage through her things and and make sense of what to do in the horrible aftermath of death things that we never thought possible would devastate us seeing her bicycle with a pink helmet hanging from the handlebars and the white wall tires and just cause you to double over in pain now I have hope but here's what I discovered the hard way hurting with hope still hurts and God doesn't burgred you if you're here today and you're mad God doesn't begrudge you if you're here today and you're full of grief and you don't understand and you're angry and you're confused I'm telling you it can be the picture of faith to be horrified and angry and mad and not understand but in your rage still worship God in your rage still say you give and you take away but bless it be the name of the Lord I'm telling you I felt like a caged Tiger I wanted to tear all the equipment off the walls in the emergency room and that doctor came in and said sorry there's nothing more I can do we're gonna turn the machines off would you like to be there to say goodbye I wanted to tear everything off the hospital I felt I felt so much anger and so much rage but I still felt loved and I still felt worship for my God who sent his son to the cross in order for us to have life he never wanted us to experience death in the first place it wasn't his plan it's not his plan today but his plan is to send Jesus to bring salvation in the midst of a world that long lay in sin and error pining and he came to raise the sons of earth he came to give them second birth I can't be mad at the God who now holds my daughter I can't be mad at the God saved my soul and one day will reunite me with her so so there's there's a tension in the midst of it there's an anger in it and when I feel angry at what has happened to me I feel God saying I'm angry too and I'm gonna do something about it and I read the book of Revelation I see his plan to destroy the enemy I see his plan to destroy death itself I see his plan to give us a new heaven and a new earth where there will be righteousness forever and so in the midst of my pain I lean into God's anger I don't run from my anger I run to him in the midst of his anger as he says I'm mad too I'm angry too I think about some of the unnecessary details of the resurrection I think of some of the absolutely ridiculous things like the fact that he has promised read it sometime it's amazing the Bible is so good he has promised to come back with the sound of a trumpet with a shout and the roar of an angel like a lion and he's gonna give the give the word and every single Christian who has ever lived he will raise their physical bodies from the grave he will steal them from the jaws of death itself and he will transform them into a glorified body that we will get to live in forever with Jesus who lives in his glorified body now here's the thing if I am Peter hearing God explain this I'm gonna go wait what why like I'm a Peter now I'm in heaven I've been in heaven since what 35 80 60 AD we'd have to ask Pastor Gary Clark how long Peter's been in heaven but he's been in heaven for like just shy of 2,000 years and whenever it happens it could happen today and may Jesus come quickly come on Maranatha may he come quickly right so so when he does when he comes and that's why we got such urgency that's why you need to have five more campuses that's why you got to preach the gospel some more Christ could come back at any moment we don't have the luxury of sitting around playing it cool we got a run into the night because I'm telling you there is a day coming when you can't preach the gospel you try and get to heaven and tell somebody about Jesus they'll say yeah he's right over there but right now they don't know about him right now we gotta tell him about him we gotta go we gotta preach we gotta reach we got a song Peter I'm just talking to you and I'm in heaven and Jesus says Peter we gotta go the father just told me cuz up until that moment he didn't even know Jesus said the father only knows the Angels don't know I don't even know he separated himself from that information while he was in earth so who would actually feel like we feel he removed himself from the ability to understand all God's plan so as Jesus function he functioned like us he had to trust you trust a father every every moment and so now in heaven Peter Jesus like get on your white horse let's go let's go it's time to go and Peter's like what's the deal and Jesus I'm gonna go get you your body back now Peter for 2,000 years has been living in some sort of body we know that heaven is like a city we know it's a place we know we know it's not just an ethereal floating around Casper the ghosting it up y'all that's not it when you think I haven't you should think of riding a horse down the beach tropical wind whipping through your hair having a pina colada Jesus said it's paradise right don't be Casper the ghost in it the devil came up with the boring heaven so we'd be more excited about Hell I'm telling you heaven is real life it's more life it's true life there's art there's beauty there's dancing there's poetry it's a city heavens a place like Pittsburgh but better so so Peter says you're gonna go get my body worship team come on out here you're gonna go get my body and Jesus says yeah he says well I've been living in something since I died I got hung upside down when I cross upside-down I didn't know I woke up here this body seems pretty good I haven't gotten sick I've never had a bad day I've never had a single headache this body's fine you realize God's gonna give us some form to dwell in right and so Peters in heaven going this this versions fantastic what what what what in the world do you need that one for that one was messed up that one you know the foot has an issue it always found its way to my mouth that foot of that body and you're like hold on pause it's been 2,000 years that thing has been reduced ash to ash dust to dust and God would say I know where every single molecule of dust is and I made you out of dust in the book of Genesis and I'm gonna remake you out of dust all I need is one little dot of Peter I'll grab that and fashion a brand new body and Peter would say but honestly I mean it's great that yeah I love that you're taking this so seriously but this one's just fine God the father would say to Peter and God the Father would say to me and I understand it as a father oh no we're gonna go get that one back because something precious was taken and I'm gonna make all things new I love the resurrection because it's so unnecessary it just shows there's something vindictive in the heart of God who hates that something's been taken from me so I just came to vous Church to tell you if something horrible has happened to you if something dark has happened to you that don't run from God he's the one who has a plan to do something about it run to him in your pain run to him in your anger run to him in your rage run toward the roar and may heaven help us to look at our life through the eyes of a lion with the kind of perspective that would see in the midst of it what you can't see with the naked eye when my daughter took her last breath and we ended up in our living room at 2:00 in the morning hurting and confused the phone rang and honestly I thought it was gonna be a call from the hospital saying she sat up she's good your prayers have been heard just delayed so I thought grabbed the phone and it was indeed the hospital but they were saying to me words no father wants to hear they said you know we're supposed to ask you about organ donation have you thought about your daughter's heart valves have you thought about and basically all I heard was can we cut into your baby girl we prayed about it and we made the decision she doesn't need those valves right now but so if it could save someone else's life and give him more time to hear about Jesus God what God and linnea both would have us to say yes so we said yes we made that decision and they called us back a couple weeks later we got a letter in the mail eventually and we've written out to him a reach out to him we haven't gotten to be in touch with them yet but the days come and I'm believing for it let me show you my little girl this is lenio who were we can't wait to be reunited with again one day let me tell you what they told us they told us we took her corneas and with her two corneas the cornea is the outermost lens of the eye with the lenses of her eye they were able to give sight to two blind people and they today see life through the eyes of a lion and I don't know about you but I'm thankful for a God who's so good he'll even bring good out of bad he's so good he'll even bless you and places where you never should have gone so come on right now all across the church let's trust God with our pain let's trust God with our problems and let's just say for a second your name your name it has no rival come on let's sing it out it has no equal let's lift up Jesus in this place come on sing it all across the church

Channel: VOUS Church

Views: 33,717

Rating: 4.9384613 out of 5

Keywords: levi lusko, fresh life church, vous church, through the eyes of a lion, rich wilkerson jr

Id: 1M3nuIXu-DE

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2017