by David Dodd

As one of the premier worship leaders of our time, Paul Baloche literally opens his heart to God’s direction.  Here’s how the birth of Open the Eyes of My  Heart came about: 

“I try to have my antenna up all the time so when I hear a phrase or a line or I read something, I’ll collect that and put it in my journal much like I’m collecting little stones or something.

 I heard a pastor pray at onetime before he preached, ‘God, as we look into your Word tonight we just pray that you open the eyes of our heart and help us to really comprehend and understand ’ and I thought, man, that’s kind of a neat phrase.  So every once in awhile at church during the time of prayer, I kind of ran out of songs and I just kind of started to sing that phrase out, over an E chord:”

Open the eyes of my Heart Lord,

I want to see You

 “You know, in my mind it wasn’t a song, it was just this prayerful phrase that I would sing out once in awhile and people in our congregation would sing it out.  One day I just thought, this could be a song, you know, I need another section though, so I thought about who saw God in the Bible,  the Apostle John on the island of Patmos saw God, and Isaiah. 

In Chapter 6, it says: I see the Lord and He’s high and lifted up, and I thought, man:”

You are high and lifted up…

 “And again, I think that in writing I try to just put myself in that environment, I put my eyes in my imagination and imagine just being in that moment and just seeing the Lord high and lifted up, and the next moment is just shining, like looking at the Sun. This incredibly bright image:”

Shining in the light of your glory…

“Just crying out to God:”

God, pour out your power and love,  

     “I mean a very simple song.  I never beyond my wildest dreams ever thought that God would place this song in people’s hearts, but it started out as this song in our church as a simple expression of crying out to God saying I just want to see you.

 When the Apostle Paul saw the Lord, here he was this Pharisee and he knew the Old Testament; he was a scholar in a sense and yet it didn’t change his heart. What changed his heart was a revelation of Jesus. Here he had all this knowledge and information and there he was killing Christians, but it wasn’t until he had this revelation of Jesus that was blinding - that was the thing that radically changed his life.

     I had heard thousands of sermons and I’m just not where I want to be with God and it was kind of a cry in my heart saying God, open the eyes of my heart, just one glimpse, one revelation of who you are, and I would be forever changed.

     There’s nothing wrong with listening to a bunch of wonderful sermons, they certainly help, but there’s nothing like just having a revelation.”