Are You Chasing the Wrong Things? What Jesus Says About Seeing God Clearly

Have you ever convinced yourself of something that you later learned wasn't, in fact, true? Our memories are sometimes so strong that it's hard to convince ourselves that what we think we know, we cannot actually know. And here's the thing — over time, our perspective and our perceptions about God can be subject to the very same thing. We confidently misremember what we know about God. But never fear, Jesus offers us a solution.

The Mandela Effect and Your Spiritual Vision

In pop culture, this phenomenon is called the Mandela Effect. It's named after Nelson Mandela, who many people remember dying in prison in the 1980s. The only problem is that Mandela lived until 2013. The Mandela Effect is people remembering something incorrectly, but with total confidence.

Think about it — so many of us love snacking on "Cheez-Itz," except they aren't Cheez-Itz and they never have been. They are Cheez-It Crackers. And then there's the one that got me. I really thought I knew what the Monopoly Man looked like, dressed sharp and wearing his monocle. It turns out he never had a monocle. I was confusing him with Mr. Peanut, who does, in fact, wear a monocle.

Our spiritual vision can work the same way. Instead of trying to remember what we once knew about God and getting it wrong, Jesus offers us a better way.

What Jesus Actually Said

We're in Part 6 of our series, "The Good Life," working through the opening section of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount — one of the most famous teachings in history. In a world where you fight to get ahead and seek power as a means of control, Jesus gives an entirely new way to live. And in Matthew 5:8, he says this:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

Jesus is actually restating a Psalm — a song of worship — that would have been familiar to many of his listeners. The psalmist writes in Psalm 24:3-4:

"Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? Only those whose hands and hearts are pure..."

The question of how one can see or experience God is not new when Jesus introduces it in Matthew 5. And the answer remains the same: purity of heart.

What "Pure" Actually Means

I can see the wheels turning. You're hoping that doesn't mean what it seems like it might mean. Your Netflix watch list is running through your mind. You want to be sure your TikTok algorithm never sees the light of day.

Here's the good news and the bad news. It doesn't mean what you think — that's the good news. It means significantly more — that's potentially the bad news.

The Greek word Jesus uses here is katharos, which simply means clean, without stain, or unpolluted. This word was used to describe dirty clothes that have been washed clean, grain that had been sifted so the chaff was removed, and even an army that had been purged of cowardly or ineffective soldiers. Katharos describes something so pure that it has been returned to its intended state.

A pure heart is not a flawless heart. A pure heart is an undivided heart.

Most people think purity is primarily about avoiding bad behavior. Jesus certainly cares about behavior, but He always goes deeper than behavior because behavior is downstream from the heart. A divided heart eventually creates a divided life — and even a double life.

What Impurity Does to Your Vision

Here's what Jesus is saying: the pure in heart begin recovering the ability to see what distraction has blinded us to.

This is one of the tragedies of a constantly distracted culture. When your life is consumed by noise, hurry, comparison, achievement, and endless stimulation, your spiritual vision slowly becomes clouded. Not because God has disappeared, but because your attention has been captured by other things.

Impurity clouds the lens of the soul.

• Bitterness makes it harder to recognize grace.

• Greed makes it harder to recognize provision.

• Lust makes it harder to recognize dignity.

• Pride makes it harder to recognize dependence on God.

• Anxiety makes it harder to recognize His faithfulness.

• Busyness makes it harder to see beyond ourselves.

But purity clears the lens. The pure in heart begin seeing that God was present in places they once overlooked.

The Honest Struggle

Here's why having a pure heart is so hard: part of us wants God, but the other part of us wants what we want. The Apostle Paul — one of the most influential early followers of Jesus — wrote honestly about this very struggle in Romans 7:15,19:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing."

Purity of heart is not pretending that struggle does not exist. It is learning, over time, to re-center your life around Jesus again and again. And in the middle of that struggle, Paul also wrote in Romans 7:24-25:

"Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord."

Chasing the Wrong Things

A year and a half ago, we got a puppy named Roxy. She's a cute thing, but don't let that fool you. A few weeks ago, she went out in the backyard and something caught her attention. She chased it and apparently ate it — and it turned out to be some kind of bee or wasp. In the hours that followed, it became clear she had chased and caught the wrong thing.

So many times we do the same thing. We chase things that look good in the moment — success, attention, achievement, approval, comfort, more money, more control. We lock onto things that promise satisfaction without ever stopping to ask whether what we're pursuing is actually good for us. And sometimes the consequences don't show up immediately. Sometimes they slowly swell beneath the surface until anxiety, exhaustion, bitterness, emptiness, and restlessness begin taking over our lives.

Because what captures your heart will shape your life.

Putting It Into Practice

So how do we live this kind of life? Here's a place to start:

Pay attention to what has your attention. What you pay attention to is not neutral. You are always being molded and shaped. Day after day we absorb messages about what matters most, what success looks like, and where identity should come from. Eventually those voices begin forming the way we think, react, spend, fear, and live.

Re-center around Jesus — again and again. Purity of heart isn't a one-time achievement. It's a daily practice of coming back to Jesus and saying yes to Him. Where you fix your attention, what has your heart, will ultimately determine where you go.

Ask yourself honestly: what am I chasing? Our memory gets foggy and we forget what it is we once saw. It's when we refocus our attention on Jesus that we begin to see clearly — and that we can begin to see God.

As Jesus says it in Matthew 5:8: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

What you choose to chase makes all the difference.