"When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light" (Luke 11:34).

We all know how easily our poor heart persuades itself of the rightness of any step which it desires to take, and how the devil furnishes plausible arguments to convince us of its rightness. He comes with arguments which the moral condition of our soul causes us to regard as clear, forcible, and satisfactory. If the eye were single, that is, if we were governed by but one object, namely, the glory and honor of the Lord Jesus Christ, we would have no difficulty or perplexity about any matter. The very fact that we succumb to such thinking proves our unfitness to weigh, with a well-balanced mind and spiritually adjusted conscience, the solemn consequences of such a step.

Whenever I am in perplexity as to my path, I have reason to suspect that my eye is not single, for assuredly, perplexity is not compatible with a body "full of light." We frequently go to pray for guidance in matters with which, if the eye were single and the will subject, we would have nothing whatever to do, and hence we should have no need to pray about them. To pray about anything concerning which the Word of God has plainly spoken against marks the activity of a rebellious will. As a writer has well remarked, "We sometimes seek God's will, desiring to know how to act in circumstances in which it is not His will that we should be found at all. Be assured that if we are near enough to God, and our eye is single, we shall have no trouble to know His will."

—The Lord is Near

The only way we can advance in the truth is by maintaining a good conscience. Allow one thing in your life unjudged that you know to be contrary to the Word of God, or that you fear is not in line with God's will for you, and you will soon find your spiritual eyes become darkened, your spiritual susceptibilities deadened, and no real progress is made in your soul, but rather a steady decline.

But where there is faithfulness in separation from that which is opposed to the mind of God and where His Word is allowed to sit in judgment on all your ways, you will learn that "The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Proverbs 4:18). The Word will illumine each step before you. —H.A. Ironside

How often our blindness to truth and inability to distinguish between right and wrong can be traced to our lack of the single eye that has Christ as its one Object. —Hamilton Smith