2 Corinthians 3:15–16 (KJV) ~ “But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.”
Paul uses the image of the veil from Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 34 to describe a heart that cannot clearly perceive spiritual truth. Under the new covenant, Christ removes the veil. Paul declares that when a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. This points to more than physical sight; it speaks of spiritual understanding, revelation, and the ability to see through the truth of God rather than through old ways of thinking.
There comes a time in your walk with God when you have to stop asking Him only to show you what is ahead and become willing to let Him show you what is within. You may have been praying, “Lord, show me my next step. Show me the door. Show me the opportunity. Show me where You are taking me.” Yet the Holy Spirit may answer, “Before I show you what is ahead, I need to remove what is affecting how you see.” You can have your eyes open and still not see clearly. You can have Scripture in front of you and still interpret your life through pain, fear, disappointment, tradition, or an old experience. This is why David prayed in Psalm 119:18, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” Sometimes you do not need God to give you something new to look at; you need Him to open your eyes so you can correctly see what is already there.
Paul says that there was a veil upon the heart. That is important because the veil was not simply affecting what they saw with their natural eyes; it affected their spiritual understanding. Your heart influences the way you interpret what happens around you. Proverbs 4:23 tells you, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” If your heart has been wounded, disappointed, rejected, or hardened, you may begin interpreting everything through what happened to you rather than through what God has spoken concerning you.
If rejection has touched your heart, you may interpret correction as rejection. If betrayal has touched your heart, you may become suspicious of genuine love. If abandonment has wounded you, you may expect everyone who gets close to eventually leave. If disappointment has settled deeply within you, you may begin expecting something to go wrong every time something good begins. You can be standing in a completely new season while looking through the lens of an old one.
That is why you have to ask yourself, “What am I looking through?” You may be looking at your future through your past. You may be looking at a new relationship through an old betrayal. You may be looking at a new opportunity through a previous failure. You may be looking at God’s promises through what did not happen the last time you prayed. The thing in front of you may be new, but if the lens has not changed, you will keep interpreting new things through old experiences.
This is why Romans 12:2 tells you, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Transformation and renewed vision are connected. God does not simply want to move you geographically, professionally, relationally, or spiritually. He wants to renew the mind you are taking with you. A new location with an old mindset can eventually produce the same bondage. A new relationship with an unhealed heart can reproduce old patterns. A new opportunity with an old fear can cause you to sabotage what you prayed to receive. God wants to remove the veil, so that you do not carry yesterday’s vision into tomorrow’s promise.
Sometimes the veil is familiarity. You have lived with something for so long that you no longer recognize it as bondage. You learned how to function with it. You learned how to work around it. You learned how to explain it. You may have even incorporated it into your personality and said, “That’s just how I am.” But the Holy Spirit may be asking you, “Is that really who you are, or is that who you became in order to survive what happened to you?” There is a difference.
Maybe you were not always guarded; perhaps disappointment taught you to build walls. Maybe you were not always suspicious; betrayal taught you to question everybody’s motives. Maybe you were not always controlling; instability taught you that you had to manage everything yourself. Maybe you were not always afraid to move; failure taught you to expect another fall. The Holy Spirit is not condemning you for how you survived, but He loves you too much to allow a survival mechanism to become a permanent identity.
Jesus said in John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Truth and liberty are connected. Sometimes freedom begins when you finally tell the truth about what you have been carrying. You stop saying, “I’m fine,” when you know something still hurts. You stop saying, “It doesn’t bother me,” when it continues influencing your decisions. You stop saying, “That’s just how I am,” when the Holy Spirit is showing you that He wants to transform that area of your life. This is where the veil has to come off.
Sometimes the veil is pride. Pride does not always look arrogant. Sometimes pride simply refuses correction. It allows you to see what everyone else needs to change while remaining blind to what God wants to change in you. Jesus addressed this principle in Matthew 7:3, asking why you would focus on the speck in someone else’s eye while failing to recognize what is obstructing your own vision. It is possible to be completely accurate about somebody else’s issue and still be blind to yours.
You can pray, “Lord, fix them,” while God is saying, “I want to heal you.” You can spend so much time analyzing why somebody treated you the way they did that you never ask how what they did has affected the person you have become. You may never receive an apology. They may never acknowledge what happened. They may never understand the damage they caused. But your liberty cannot remain dependent upon somebody else’s willingness to change.
The veil can also be offense. Offense changes your vision because once you are wounded, everything begins passing through the wound. You hear conversations differently. You interpret motives differently. You approach relationships differently. You can become so committed to protecting yourself from being hurt again that you also protect yourself from the very people God sends to love, support, and help you.
This is why Hebrews 12:15 warns you to watch carefully so that a “root of bitterness” does not spring up and trouble you. A root grows beneath the surface before anything becomes visible above the ground. Bitterness can operate the same way. Something can be growing in your heart long before you recognize its fruit in your behavior. The Holy Spirit wants to deal with the root because He knows what the root will eventually produce.
Sometimes the veil is fear. Fear can convince you that caution and bondage are the same thing. You tell yourself you are simply being wise when you are actually afraid to try again. You tell yourself the timing is not right when fear is keeping you from moving. You keep asking God for confirmation when He has already spoken because obedience would require you to step beyond what feels safe. But 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds you, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” When fear becomes the primary voice directing your decisions, you need to ask whether you are being led by the Spirit or governed by a veil.
There can even be a veil of religious familiarity. You can become so accustomed to how God moved before that you fail to recognize how He is moving now. You know the old song, the old method, the old routine, the old instruction, and the old season. But God is not obligated to repeat Himself simply because you became comfortable with His previous method.
Isaiah 43:18–19 says, “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing.” You cannot perceive the new thing while insisting that it look exactly like the old thing. Sometimes the veil is not sin; sometimes it is your attachment to what used to work. Yesterday’s instruction may have been God, but you still need today’s direction.
Paul gives you the key in 2 Corinthians 3:16: “Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.” Your turning matters. There are some things you have tried to think your way through, explain your way through, work your way through, and even worry your way through, but Paul says there comes a moment when you have to turn to the Lord.
When you turn toward Him, you turn away from whatever has been governing your vision. You turn away from fear and toward faith. You turn away from bitterness and toward forgiveness. You turn away from control and toward surrender. You turn away from the opinions of people and toward what God has spoken. You turn away from the constant replaying of what happened and toward the God who can heal what happened, your turning begins to change your seeing.
Psalm 34:5 says, “They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.” There is something that happens when you redirect your attention toward God. You may not immediately receive every answer, but your perspective begins to change. You begin to recognize His hand in places where you previously saw only disappointment.
What you called rejection may have been redirection. What you called a closed door may have been protection. What you called delay may have been preparation. What you called isolation may have been a season when God was teaching you to recognize His voice without the noise of everybody else’s opinions. You may eventually look back and realize that God was working in a place where you were convinced nothing was happening.
However, when the veil comes off, God may not only show you what others did. He may show you, you. He may reveal your response, your pattern, your attitude, your fear, your unforgiveness, your need to control, or your refusal to release something. This is where you must resist the temptation to cover the veil back over your heart.
David prayed in Psalm 139:23–24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” That is a courageous prayer because you are giving God permission to show you something about yourself that you may not have noticed. You are saying, “Lord, don’t only show me what they did wrong. Show me what needs healing in me. Don’t only expose the people around me. Expose the patterns operating within me.”
Revelation is not condemnation. Romans 8:1 reminds you, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” When the Holy Spirit reveals something, He is not trying to shame you. He is bringing it into the light so that it no longer has to control you from the darkness. If He shows you the chain, it is because He wants you free. If He reveals the wound, it is because He wants you healed. If He exposes the pattern, it is because He does not want you repeating it. You cannot heal what you continually hide, and you cannot surrender what you continually deny.
This is where you have to decide whether you want comfort or clarity. Comfort will allow you to continue telling yourself the same story. Clarity may challenge you, but clarity can also free you. Jesus said in John 16:13 that the Spirit of truth would guide you into all truth. The Holy Spirit does not guide you into truth merely so you can know more. He guides you into truth so that truth can transform the way you live.
There may be something God has been trying to show you for a long time, but every time He brings you close to it, you become uncomfortable and change the subject. You pray about something else. You blame somebody else. You become busy. You distract yourself. But if you keep asking, “Holy Spirit, have Your way,” eventually you must allow Him to have His way with the things you would rather not examine.
Perhaps the veil is not preventing God from seeing you. The veil is preventing you from seeing what God wants you to see. So today, stop being afraid of clarity. You do not have to fear what God reveals because He already knows what is underneath the veil, and He still called you. He already knows the wounds, the fears, the mistakes, the patterns, the insecurities, and the places where you struggle. Yet He still says, “Turn to Me.”
This is liberty. Liberty is not pretending the veil was never there. Liberty is allowing Christ to remove it. Liberty is being able to look at your past without allowing your past to determine your vision. Liberty is recognizing your wound without allowing your wound to become your identity. Liberty is acknowledging what happened without permitting what happened to dictate what happens next.
Ephesians 1:18 speaks of “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” That is what you need in this season. You need more than natural sight. You need spiritual clarity. You need the Holy Spirit to help you discern what is God, what is fear, what is habit, what is hurt, what is wisdom, and what is simply familiarity.
Today, let your prayer become, “Lord, remove anything that is affecting my ability to see You, myself, others, or this season clearly.” You have spent enough time adjusting to things God wants to remove. You have walked around the chain long enough. You have learned how to function with the wound long enough. You have looked through yesterday’s lens long enough.
Turn toward the Lord and let the veil come off. Let Him show you what you could not see before. Let Him correct what you misunderstood. Let Him uncover what you buried. Let Him challenge what you accepted as normal. Let Him heal what distorted your vision. You are not losing something when the veil comes off. You are finally gaining the clarity necessary to walk in the liberty that has been waiting for you.
Let’s Pray:
Father, in the name of Jesus, I come before You today with my heart open and my spirit surrendered. I am not coming asking You only to change what is happening around me; I am asking You to show me what needs to change within me. Your Word says that when I turn to You, the veil is taken away, so today I deliberately turn my heart, my mind, my attention, my desires, and my expectations toward You. I do not want to continue seeing through the lens of what happened to me. I want to see through the truth of what You have spoken over me. Holy Spirit, take the veil off. Remove every veil that has affected the way I see You, the way I see myself, the way I see other people, and the way I see the season I am in. If fear has distorted my vision, reveal it. If rejection has caused me to question my worth, heal it. If disappointment has caused me to expect the worst, uproot it. If betrayal has caused me to become suspicious of everyone who comes close to me, restore my ability to discern without living guarded by fear. If abandonment has convinced me that everyone eventually leaves, remind me that You promised never to leave me nor forsake me. Father, search me according to Psalm 139:23–24. Search my heart, know my thoughts, and show me anything within me that is interfering with the liberty You desire for me. I give You permission to reveal what I have ignored, uncover what I have buried, challenge what I have accepted, and correct what I have misunderstood. Show me where I have called fear wisdom, where I have called isolation independence, where I have called control responsibility, and where I have called bondage normal simply because I learned how to function in it. I do not want to become so comfortable with what is familiar that I resist what is free. I refuse to adjust my life around chains You want to break. I refuse to build my identity around wounds You desire to heal. I refuse to keep saying, “That’s just how I am,” when Your Spirit is calling me to become who You created me to be. I acknowledge that some of the ways I learned to survive were necessary for a previous season, but I will not allow survival mechanisms to become permanent identities. If You are calling me out of something, give me courage to come out. Holy Spirit show me where offense has affected my vision. If I have been looking at people through the lens of what someone else did to me, heal my heart. If bitterness has taken root beneath the surface, uproot it completely. I do not want an old wound speaking into new relationships. I do not want yesterday’s betrayal to determine today’s trust. I do not want someone who hurt me in the past to continue influencing how I receive the people You send into my future. Father, remove the veil of pride. Help me to receive correction without becoming defensive. Teach me to pray, “Lord, show me, me,” before I ask You to show me what is wrong with everybody else. If I have spent more time examining someone else’s behavior than examining my own heart, redirect my attention. Give me the humility to admit when I am wrong, the maturity to apologize when necessary, and the wisdom to change when Your Spirit reveals something that does not reflect You. Remove the veil of fear from my life. Your Word declares in 2 Timothy 1:7 that You have not given me the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. Therefore, I refuse to allow fear to continue making decisions for me. I will not call fear discernment. I will not call avoidance wisdom. I will not continually ask You for another confirmation when You have already spoken simply because obedience makes me uncomfortable. Give me courage to move when You say move, wait when You say wait, speak when You say speak, and remain silent when You say be still. Father, remove the veil of my past. I refuse to keep looking at my future through yesterday’s experiences. I will not assume that because something happened before, it must happen again. I will not allow an old failure to tell me that I cannot succeed. I will not allow an old rejection to convince me that I will never be chosen. I will not allow an old disappointment to cause me to doubt every promise You make. I will not allow yesterday’s pain to write tomorrow’s expectations. Open the eyes of my understanding according to Ephesians 1:18. Give me spiritual clarity. Help me discern what is You and what is fear, what is wisdom and what is avoidance, what is discernment and what is suspicion, what is waiting and what is procrastination, what is preparation and what is hesitation. I do not want my emotions to become louder than Your Spirit. Teach me to recognize Your voice even when Your instruction challenges what I expected. Father, help me see my circumstances differently. What I called rejection, show me if it was redirection. What I called a closed door, show me if it was protection. What I called delay, help me recognize where You were preparing me. What I called isolation, show me where You were teaching me to hear Your voice without the noise of everyone else’s opinions. What I thought was an ending, show me where You were making room for another beginning. I acknowledge that I may not understand everything You have allowed, but I choose to trust Your character when I cannot understand Your methods. Heal every place where disappointment caused me to question Your goodness. Father, heal every place where waiting caused me to question Your faithfulness. Heal every place where unanswered prayer caused me to wonder whether You heard me. Remind me that silence does not mean absence and waiting does not mean abandonment. You have been present even in the places where I could not recognize Your hand. Lord, change the way I see myself. I refuse to see myself through the words of people who misunderstood me, rejected me, abandoned me, criticized me, or hurt me. I refuse to define myself by my mistakes, failures, missed opportunities, or difficult seasons. Let me see myself through Your Word. I am loved. I am forgiven. I am chosen. I am being restored. I am being renewed. I am being transformed. I am not what happened to me. I am becoming who You have called me to be. Father, I also ask You to remove anything that has affected the way I see You. If I have unconsciously viewed You through the actions of people who failed me, heal that place in me. If I have expected You to abandon me because people abandoned me, correct my vision. If I have questioned Your love because someone else’s love was conditional, teach me to receive Your perfect love. If I have questioned Your faithfulness because people broke their promises, remind me that You are not a man that You should lie. Holy Spirit, guide me into truth according to John 16:13. I do not want truth only when it is comfortable. I want truth that corrects me, truth that heals me, truth that challenges me, truth that matures me, and truth that makes me free. Jesus said in John 8:32, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” I want that freedom. I want liberty more than I want to protect an old version of myself. Give me the courage to see what You reveal without covering it back up. When You expose something, remind me that revelation is not condemnation. When You show me a wound, remind me that You are the Healer. When You show me a chain, remind me that You are the Deliverer. When You reveal a pattern, remind me that through Your Spirit I do not have to repeat it. When You correct my vision, help me not to return to the old lens simply because it is familiar. Father, I am ready for clarity. I am ready for truth. I am ready for healing. I am ready for transformation. I am ready for liberty. I do not want comfortable bondage when You are offering me freedom. I do not want familiar darkness when You are calling me into greater light. I do not want to keep walking around something You have given me the grace to walk out of. So today, I give You the veil. Take it off, Lord. Take off the veil of fear. Take off the veil of rejection. Take off the veil of offense. Take off the veil of bitterness. Take off the veil of disappointment. Take off the veil of pride. Take off the veil of tradition. Take off the veil of familiarity. Take off every veil that keeps me from seeing what You are doing, hearing what You are saying, and becoming who You are calling me to be. Let the eyes of my understanding be enlightened. Let truth replace every lie, let clarity replace confusion, let faith replace fear, forgiveness replace bitterness, healing replace hurt, and let liberty replace bondage. I turn my face toward You, Lord. I turn my heart toward You. I turn my thoughts toward You. I turn my future toward You. Holy Spirit, have Your way in me. Do not just change what I am looking at; change the way I am looking at it. Do not just show me the next door; prepare my vision for what is on the other side. Do not allow me to enter a new season with an old lens. Give me eyes to see what You see, ears to hear what You are saying, and a heart willing to obey what You reveal. Today, I declare that the veil is coming off. I will no longer allow my past to distort my present or dictate my future. I will no longer allow pain to determine my perspective. I will no longer allow fear to determine my movement. I will no longer allow bondage to disguise itself as familiarity. I turn to the Lord, and according to Your Word, the veil shall be taken away. Father, let me see clearly. Let me walk freely. Let me love freely. Let me forgive freely. Let me obey freely. Let me worship freely. Let me become everything You intended me to become without the obstruction of an old veil. Take me deeper into Your truth, deeper into Your presence, deeper into surrender, and deeper into the liberty that comes through Jesus Christ. The veil is coming off, my vision is becoming clear, my heart is turning toward You, and I am walking forward in liberty. Holy Spirit, have Your way. In Jesus Christ Mighty Name, Amen.
Tagline: Sometimes the first evidence of liberty is not that your circumstances changed; it is that the veil came off and you finally saw clearly what had been keeping you bound. When you turn toward the Lord, your turning begins to change your seeing.
Blessings…
Love, Dr. Jean…
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