I woke up one morning full of hate.
Not irritable. Not frustrated. Hate. The kind that had weight to it, that sat in my chest like something physical. Everything in my life felt wrong. I was seeing the corrupt prosper while honest people struggled. I was watching governments fail the people they were supposed to serve. I was thinking about things people had done to me — people I had forgiven, more than once, because forgiveness is not always a one-time thing — and the anger was back as if I had never let it go at all.
And then the thoughts started.
Thoughts I had never had before. Violent thoughts. Thoughts about people I knew — people who had treated others poorly, people who had taken advantage of good people, people who had done my family wrong, and people who had done me wrong. I am not going to dress it up — my thoughts were murderous. It disturbed me deeply because it wasn't me. I had never had thoughts like that before — ever. I knew this wasn't who I was, and I knew I was under some kind of demonic attack. I reached out to people to pray for me. Every time one of those thoughts came, I repented. But they kept coming all day. Work was worse than it had been in a long time. I had blowups with people I loved and said some things I would never let myself say. By the time I went to bed, I felt depressed, angry, and weighed down by something I did not fully understand.
That night I had a vivid dream.
I woke up in the middle of it and grabbed my phone and started typing. After about ten minutes I looked at what I was writing and thought — what am I even writing? — and went back to sleep. The dream came again. I woke up again and typed again. Same thing. What am I writing? Back to sleep. It happened a third time. Same pattern.
In the morning I woke up feeling like a new person. I remembered my dream and picked up my phone and read what I had written. And I was amazed.
But what I noticed first wasn't the words. It was that the hate was gone. Completely gone. And I was seeing things I had never seen before. Throughout the day I found myself praying constantly — not in a disciplined, scheduled way but in a continuous way, speaking to God every few minutes without even thinking about it. I understood for the first time what "pray without ceasing" actually meant. It wasn't a command I was trying to follow. It was just happening.
And then I realized: I was no longer seeing through my own eyes.
It felt like I had stepped outside of myself. Like a different set of eyes had opened — eyes that saw everything differently. The people I had hated the day before, I was now praying for. Without effort. Without forcing it. The corrupt politicians I had been angry about — I found myself interceding for them instead of talking about them. I felt bold and confident in a way I couldn't explain, and I knew exactly why: I wasn't seeing myself through the world's eyes anymore. I was seeing myself as a child of God. Part of His royal family.
I was walking in the Spirit.
And I knew — in that moment with a clarity I had never felt before — that this was not supposed to be a one-time experience. This was how I was supposed to see all the time.
Two Sets of Eyes
Every human being is walking around with two sets of eyes available to them.
The first set is the one we are born with — the eyes of the flesh. They see what is visible. They process the physical world, measure circumstances, assess threats, calculate what is advantageous. They are useful. But they are limited to what can be seen, touched, measured, and explained. And what can be seen, touched, measured, and explained is not the deepest reality. It is only the surface of it.
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV
The second set of eyes — the ones Paul is talking about — sees what is unseen. They perceive the spiritual reality that governs and underlies everything physical. They understand things the flesh cannot access. And they are not available to everyone — at least not in their full capacity. Because they require a connection that most people don't have.
"The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit." 1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV
Cannot understand them. Not "doesn't want to" or "chooses not to." Cannot. This is the same structural problem at the root of the fall — the severed circuit between God's Spirit and the human spirit. The flesh, operating without the Spirit, is genuinely incapable of perceiving spiritual reality. It's not a moral failure. It's a design issue. The eyes that see spiritual truth require the Spirit of God to function.
Which is why the moment the circuit is restored — the moment God's Spirit reconnects to the human spirit — everything changes about what you are able to see.
What the World Is Sensing Without Knowing It
Here is something worth sitting with.
Some of the most brilliant minds in the world — physicists, philosophers, technologists — have arrived at a conclusion that sounds strange from the outside: the physical world is not the primary reality. That there is something governing it from a deeper level. That what we see is subordinate to what we cannot see.
Elon Musk has said publicly that the odds we are not living in a simulation are a billion to one. He is not being dramatic. He has studied the nature of reality more carefully than most people ever will, and his conclusion is that this physical realm is not the base layer. Something else is.
He is right. He just doesn't have the framework to name what he's detected.
What these minds are sensing — without the Spirit to name it — is the exact reality Scripture has always described. The physical world is real, but it is temporary. The spiritual world is more real, and it is eternal. Everything happening in the visible realm is being shaped by forces operating in the invisible one. The battle is not primarily physical. The war is not fought with physical weapons. The ground being contested is not land or money or political power — it is the human soul, the human mind, the human spirit.
Walking in the Spirit means living with the full awareness of this reality. It means making decisions based not just on what you can see but on what is actually happening. It means recognizing that the argument you're in with someone is not just an argument — that the anxiety you're feeling is not just anxiety — that the pull toward certain thoughts or behaviors is not random. Everything is spiritual. Not in a way that ignores the physical — but in a way that understands the physical is always downstream of the spiritual.
What Opening Your Eyes Actually Feels Like
The morning after that dream, I understood something that no amount of teaching had fully communicated to me before.
Walking in the Spirit is not a feeling you chase. It is not a spiritual high you work yourself into. It is a way of seeing — a sustained orientation of the inner eyes toward the spiritual reality that is always present. And when those eyes are open, everything looks different. Not just religious things. Everything.
When the flesh begins to close my eyes again, it feels like tiredness settling in. A heaviness. A kind of laziness. It is as though my gaze is turning downward instead of upward. I can feel the weight of my body pulling me back into submission to the world around me.
That is why the renewal of the mind cannot be a one-time event. It has to happen every day. Every morning I wake up, I have to choose which set of eyes I am going to see through. I remind myself of who God is. Of who I was before the fall, what happened, what Jesus did, and who I am now as a result. I remind myself that I am a child of God with real purpose and real authority. I take captive every thought that tries to position itself above the knowledge of God — but I can only do that effectively after the eyes are open. You cannot take captive what you cannot see.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
The Spirit is willing. The flesh is weak. And every morning is a choice about which one leads.
The Eyes That Unite
There is one more thing about these eyes that I don't want to skip over, because it might be the most practically important thing in this chapter.
Opening spiritual eyes is what produces unity.
Most of the division in the church — the denominations, the arguments, the conflicting theologies, the endless debates about who God is and what He requires — comes from people trying to understand spiritual things through flesh eyes. When you are seeing through the flesh, every disagreement becomes a battle for turf. Every difference in interpretation becomes a threat. Every other perspective is something to be defeated rather than considered.
But when two people are genuinely walking in the Spirit — when both sets of eyes are open, when both are seeing through the lens of Christ rather than through the lens of their own background, culture, and preference — something changes. Not because they agree on everything. But because they are looking at the same source of light. And people looking at the same light tend to see the same things.
"Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." Philippians 2:2–4 NIV
Like-minded. One in spirit. Of one mind. This is not something that can be manufactured through better programs or more compelling arguments or smarter organization. It is the natural result of people walking in the same Spirit. When the eyes are open — really open — selfish ambition loses its grip. The need to be right shrinks. The desire to see others flourish in Christ grows. You find yourself genuinely wanting for others what you want for yourself.
God said it Himself before the tower of Babel — that when people are truly united, nothing they purpose will be impossible for them. That was people united for the wrong reasons, for pride and self-glorification. Imagine the church united for the right reason. Like-minded in seeking God, in putting Him first, in encouraging one another, in throwing off personal agendas for the sake of His Kingdom.
That unity starts here. With eyes open.
These Eyes Were Always Yours
The experience I described at the beginning of this chapter was not a miracle reserved for a special moment or a particularly spiritual person. It was a glimpse of the normal Christian life — the life that is available to every single person who is in Christ.
God gave us these eyes. They are His eyes — the Holy Spirit illuminating what is real, what is true, what is happening. They are not for a select few. They are for all who walk in the Spirit. And they are meant to stay open — not for occasional moments of clarity, but as the sustained way of moving through the world.
Real life exists in the Spirit. Everything makes sense in the Spirit. That is where life abundantly actually lives — not in circumstances going the right way, not in the flesh getting what it wants, but in the Spirit united with God's Spirit, seeing clearly, moving from that clarity, carrying His authority into every corner of ordinary life.
"The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." Romans 8:16 NIV
The Spirit testifies with our spirit. When the eyes are open, you know. Not because someone told you. Not because you reasoned your way to it. Because the Spirit of God bearing witness with your spirit is the most certain thing you have ever felt.
Open your eyes. Keep them open.
Everything looks different from here.