Give Me Your Eyes So I Can See, Part 1: Jonah and the Eyes of Compassion

Give me your eyes so I can see is a prayer for God’s perspective: eyes of compassion, grace and mercy instead of fear and judgment. In this message, Pastor Paul Hohman shows how the world tries to blind believers to the blessings in God’s Word, and he walks through the entire Book of Jonah to show what happens when a man of God refuses to see people the way God sees them.

The answer he gives is practical: God so loved the whole world, including the people we consider enemies, and we learn to see as He sees by renewing our minds in His Word every day. Below you will find the video, a structured summary, every Scripture he uses (linked to the New King James Version), a timestamped outline and practical steps. The teaching continues in Give Me Your Eyes: Spiritual Sight & Authentic Faith.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was posted on September 15, 2023, and runs about 59 minutes, closing with communion and a blessing. Pastor Paul opens by thanking guest speaker Pastor Dennis Toyne, who had preached the week before on how great God is, repeating after every point, “but wait there’s more.” That reminder sets the tone: God loves us so much that He gave us His Son and His Word, and we are meant to use both, not only believe in them.

He follows a previous series on “greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world,” where he looked at David seeking the Lord. Jonah, he says, shows the opposite side: a well-known prophet who ran from what God asked.

Give Me Your Eyes, Not Fear: God Is a God of Abundance

Pastor Paul begins with how Satan works to make us live by fear. We back off and settle for an “it’s okay” life, when God’s Word says He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). God is a God of abundance, not a God of just getting by.

He always makes a way and promises never to leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Then he turns to John 3:16, which he repeats throughout the sermon so it sinks in. We may think God’s love is for us but not for “those people”: our enemies, people who think differently, or people who are against God and against Jesus. John 3:16 says God so loved the world. “If God still loves them so should I,” he says. “God give me your eyes to see.”

God loved a world full of corruption, evil and mistakes because He saw His sons and daughters inside it. Parents understand this. Children will let us down, but the love inside us for them does not end. God has that love for everyone and wants us to have it too.

No one is beyond change. Saul was a Christian killer who thought he was doing right until God knocked him to the ground on the road and left him blind for three days (Acts 9:3–9). If God changed him, God can change anyone, and sometimes He opens our eyes by first blinding us for a while.

So believers should not criticize, belittle or speak ill of people. We see the best in others. When we feel ready to erupt like a volcano because everyone else keeps making mistakes, we remember that God so loved the world. There are times to speak into someone’s life, he says, like a parent calling a child out of a busy street, but it is done because we love them and do not want them hurt, never in anger.

Jonah Runs From the Presence of the Lord

Pastor Paul reads the whole Book of Jonah, starting with Jonah 1. The word of the Lord told Jonah to go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, because its wickedness had come up before God. He explains that the Assyrians of Nineveh rose up against the Israelites, ambushed them and made their lives miserable.

Instead, Jonah went down to Joppa, paid the fare for a ship to Tarshish, and fled from the presence of the Lord. “Doesn’t sound too much like a prophet to me,” Pastor Paul says. God has given us free will, and it is our decision to see through His eyes and do what He asks, even when we do not feel like it or understand it.

The Lord sent a great wind and a mighty tempest until the ship was about to break up. God was trying to get Jonah’s attention, just as He had to do something extra with Saul. We do the same thing, he says, arguing with God because we do not feel like it, forgetting that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9). What God asks may be small, but we never know what He is doing behind the scenes.

While the sailors cried out to their gods and threw cargo overboard, Jonah went down into the lowest part of the ship and fell fast asleep, shutting down and hiding. The captain woke him, the sailors cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. He told them he was a Hebrew who feared the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land, and the men were exceedingly afraid.

Jonah told them to throw him into the sea. Pastor Paul stops here: how much did Jonah dislike Nineveh that he was willing to die rather than obey? The sailors rowed hard to avoid it, then prayed not to be charged with innocent blood. When they threw him over, the sea ceased raging and they feared the Lord, offered a sacrifice and made vows. The Lord had prepared a great fish, and Jonah was in its belly three days and three nights.

A Prayer From the Belly of the Fish

It was not a cartoon campsite, Pastor Paul says. Any fisherman knows how slimy and foul the inside of a fish is. And just as Saul was blind for three days, Jonah spent three days there. Only then, in Jonah 2, did he cry out to the Lord because of his affliction. Not the storm, not being thrown overboard, but the fish brought him to the end of himself.

Jonah prayed that though he had been cast out of God’s sight, he would look again toward God’s holy temple. Sometimes, Pastor Paul says, it takes that for us to reopen our eyes.

The key line is Jonah’s vow: those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy, “but I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving.” Pastor Paul suggests Jonah had been grumbling and complaining. He was loyal to Israel and felt he had every right to refuse a city that kept plundering God’s people. We justify ourselves the same way, telling God how we would rather do it or what we are better at.

When we give our lives to Christ we become new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). As sons and daughters, he says, we do what our Father asks and give thanks in everything. He leads the church to say together, “I serve.” Then the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

One Message, a Whole City Set Free

In Jonah 3, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Nineveh was a three-day journey across, and on the first day Jonah cried out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Pastor Paul reads the next line twice for emphasis: the people of Nineveh believed God. The same people who had been a thorn in Israel’s side believed after one short message.

That is all it took, he says. Sometimes we get in our own way by worrying about what to say. You do not need a prepared sermon or a crowd of thousands. He has heard of people obeying God by saying something as simple as “twinkle twinkle little star” and God showing up. All he asks is that we yield to what God asks.

The people proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least. The king left his throne, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes, and decreed that neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, should eat or drink. Even the animals fasted. Everyone was to turn from his evil way and the violence in his hands. God saw their works, relented from the disaster, and did not do it.

Why does Jonah even have a book in the Bible? Pastor Paul answers that it is a caution: running from God’s presence leads nowhere good, but one person who yields can see a whole city set free.

Jonah’s Anger and the Plant

Then comes the twist of Jonah 4. It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. He told God this was why he fled to Tarshish: he knew God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness. Then he asked God to take his life. Pastor Paul marvels at how a man of God could be so angry that wicked people were set free.

God loves people who think differently from us, he says, even those who worship false gods, and it is up to us to be His hands and feet. Otherwise we back away and end up like Jonah, angry that God was merciful to people we decided did not deserve it.

Jonah sat east of the city in a shelter to watch, sure that Nineveh would never really change. God prepared a plant to shade him, then a worm that withered it, then a vehement east wind and a beating sun. When God asked whether he did well to be angry about the plant, Jonah said yes, even to death. God answered that Jonah pitied a plant he had not labored for, so should God not pity Nineveh, with more than 120,000 people who could not tell their right hand from their left, and much livestock?

The table below traces Jonah’s journey as Pastor Paul describes it, chapter by chapter:

He describes Jonah’s outlook as Murphy’s Law: if anything bad can happen, it will happen to me. That is not even a real law, he says. Believers are overcomers covered by the blood of Christ, and no weapon formed against them will prosper (Isaiah 54:17). Jonah chose not to see God’s promises because he was blinded by his own attachments to this world. We are not bound by Murphy’s Law; we are bound in blessings.

Renewing Your Mind With the Word

How do we get God’s eyes? By changing our mentality, our thought process and our habits through the Word. Pastor Paul quotes the psalm that says great peace have those who love God’s law, and nothing causes them to stumble (Psalm 119:165). When we understand God’s promises, Satan cannot lie to us. The Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105), because we live in a dark world.

The Word is a weapon, not something to gather dust on a shelf. He lists promises he stands on, including speaking to the mountain to be removed and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23). God so loved the world, he adds, not only one nation, and anyone who confesses with the mouth and believes in the heart will be saved (Romans 10:9).

Satan uses fear to blind us, telling us we are too old, too young or not good enough. Pastor Paul answers with Philippians 4:6–7: be anxious for nothing, but with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).

We will face tribulation, Jesus said, but He has overcome the world (John 16:33). So we do not thank God for the sickness or the turmoil, but that in spite of it He strengthens us and gives us wisdom. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1), and we are transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2).

He has the church read James 1:21–25 aloud: be doers of the word, and not hearers only. The hearer is like someone who looks in a mirror and forgets his face; the one who continues in the perfect law of liberty will be blessed in what he does. Psalm 1:1–3 describes that person as a tree planted by rivers of water, whose leaf does not wither and whatever he does prospers.

Unsaved friends are fine, he says, but if we spend more time with them than with believers, or church and Bible reading sit on the back burner, our priorities are out of order. He closes the teaching with Deuteronomy 30:15–20: God has set before us life and death, blessing and cursing, “therefore what choose life.” He asks, is it really that hard a choice?

The service ends with communion from 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, remembering what Christ endured for us and asking God once more to open our eyes to see Him and to see others through His eyes of grace and mercy.

Seeing Through God’s Eyes This Week

These steps come directly from Pastor Paul’s applications:

• Pray the prayer before you read. When you open your Bible, ask God to help you see through His eyes, not through your own “stinking thinking.”
• Name your Nineveh. Think of the person or group you find hardest to love, and remember that John 3:16 includes them.
• Obey the small thing quickly. Do not wait for a storm or a great fish; yield the first time God asks.
• Start in the Gospels. If you have never read the Bible, he suggests Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, reading what Jesus has done for you.
• Speak the Word over your mind. Use Scripture confessions, such as those on a sound mind and deliverance, and declare them daily.
• Check your priorities. Make the Word and fellowship with believers a daily habit, not something on the back burner.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 A world that wants to blind us
• 0:51 But wait, there’s more, and John 3:16
• 2:31 Satan wants us to live by fear
• 4:35 God still loves the people we resist
• 5:40 Saul blinded for three days
• 7:46 Eyes of compassion, grace and mercy
• 9:34 Jonah 1: arise, go to Nineveh
• 12:08 The storm and the sleeping prophet
• 14:41 Throw me into the sea
• 16:43 Jonah 2: prayer from the fish’s belly
• 19:53 The voice of thanksgiving
• 22:50 Jonah 3: the people of Nineveh believed God
• 26:11 Even the animals fasted
• 27:17 Jonah 4: displeased and angry
• 30:32 The plant, the worm and the east wind
• 32:53 Murphy’s Law versus God’s promises
• 36:14 Great peace and a lamp to my feet
• 41:39 Be anxious for nothing
• 44:57 Doers of the word, not hearers only
• 48:04 Psalm 1 and our priorities
• 49:02 Deuteronomy 30: choose life
• 53:06 Communion
• 58:37 Closing blessing

Give Me Your Eyes Series

This is the first of two messages on seeing through God’s eyes:

• You are here: Give Me Your Eyes So I Can See, Part 1: Jonah and the Eyes of Compassion
• Next: Give Me Your Eyes So I Can See, Part 2 — Be a Doer of the Word

Frequently Asked Questions

Does seeing through God’s eyes mean never correcting anyone?

No. Pastor Paul says there are times to speak into someone’s life, just as a parent tells a child to get out of a busy street where cars are doing 55 miles an hour. The difference is the motive. It is not done in anger or to belittle, but because we love them and do not want to see them hurt. Correction flows from compassion, with our eyes open to God’s goodness and kindness toward us.

Why does the sermon end with communion?

Pastor Paul explains that remembering what Christ did renews our minds. Jesus was bruised for our iniquities, beaten, mocked and abandoned by friends, and the more we remember the body and blood given for us, the more we know His power and strength are in us. He invites every believer in Jesus to take part, including those online with juice or water and bread or a cracker, and asks them to remember the storms God has brought them through.

What are the confessions Pastor Paul mentions?

He points to printed Scripture confessions Dr. Hohman prepared and placed in the church entryway. Each one gathers ten to fifteen verses into a prayer on a theme, such as a sound mind or deliverance, so people can declare the Word over their minds daily. He encourages people to take a couple, give them to loved ones, and use them whenever the enemy lies about who they are in Christ.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Jonah 1 — Jonah flees and the storm
• Jonah 2 — prayer from the fish
• Jonah 3 — Nineveh believes God
• Jonah 4 — the plant and God’s pity
• John 3:16 — God so loved the world
• Ephesians 3:20 — exceedingly abundantly
• Philippians 4:6–7 — be anxious for nothing
• James 1:21–25 — doers of the word
• Deuteronomy 30:15–20 — choose life

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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