This morning, as I sat down to write, I felt led to explore our Spirit-led ability to look deeper into the realities of life to discover what is taking place beneath the surface presentation of what we have been told to believe as truth without question. What I wanted to share was not coming together, then the Lord said, “You already wrote about this in one of your books.” After the Lord’s reminder, I went to my book, The Sound of Reformation, and sure enough, there it was, and here it is.

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When I was a young pastor living in Montana, a mountain man befriended me. He taught me how to work an open canoe through Fool Hen Rapids on the North Fork of the Flathead River and how to hunt in the mountains and valleys of Northwest Montana. 

One day this friend asked, “Do you have a good set of binoculars?” I said, “Yes, my dad gave me his.” My friend walked with me deep into the forest and said, “See that stand of dense timber? Use your binoculars to find the deer.” I thought he was nuts. Binoculars work great on the open plains where you need to see for miles, but not here in heavy brush and timber. 

My friend took a few moments to explain how binoculars work. He showed me how I could focus my binoculars on the first line of trees. Then using the focus knob on the top of the binoculars, he moved the area of focus back into the stand of trees. One after another, I moved each narrow slice of focus deeper into the forest until I was about fifty feet inside the tree line. It was then that I saw the eye of a deer. Not the whole body. Not the complete head, just a single eye looking back at me. 

I was amazed. I dropped the binoculars to my chest and said, “I would never have imagined this was possible.” We let the little doe trot off into the depths of the forest unharmed. The focus function of the binoculars taught me a valuable lesson. 

When Jesus birthed the Church, He founded us on a really simple model. That model is His redemptive love. Love is our narrow field of focus, like moving the focus of my binoculars deeper into the forest to gain new perspective and clarity. The branches and twigs no longer blurred my vision because they were out of my narrow area of focus. 

Focus is only possible with simplicity. Simplicity can help us see the way forward through all the obstacles set before us. In the process of finding our point of focus, we will discover what is hidden deep within the complexity of our diverse culture. 

If speaking the truth in love is the simple product of our equipping and maturing, any follower of Christ can use that focus of love to train their eyes on what truly matters. When any of this gets overly complicated, our faith becomes blurred, blinding us to what lies hidden. Reformation helps us find our focus and, in some cases, discover focus for the first time. 

(The Sound of Reformation, pages 96-97)