I’m a little later than I wanted to be this week, but I’m shedding the deadline to pull up a chair with you, Friend, and have a little heart to heart. True to my humanity, the sin-laced defaults always catch up to me, but with Christ, the strides to victory are getting shorter and I am ever shaken awake by the reality of His grace.
I wish I could speak from a little better place, but my honesty overcomes me to further substantiate the subject at hand. In other words, I am preaching to myself today.
So much of life is viewed from a narrowed lens, isn’t it? The outcome of our nature birthing a generation that sees most of their day through some kind of screen. I overanalyze until I realize that it’s always been this way. This generational tendency to see life through a narrowed view. Imagine looking through a spyglass at the ocean and a large sea creature comes into view. We may start to panic as the thing seems oddly large and uncomfortably close. From the fear, we drop the spyglass, just to feel a little foolish when we remember we’re on dry land. This analogy seems silly until I realize the familiarity in it. I often respond to life’s troubles and turmoil like looking through my spyglass of understanding, choosing some level of panic instead of choosing His peace that passes understanding.
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." [Philippians 4:6-7]
How often has God implored me to drop the spyglass, and expand my view of time, of space, of faith, of hope, of love, of His plans, of His purposes, of His goodness…we could fill this page with how many opportunities we have, as believers, to expand our view of His ways. I acknowledge that I don’t always drop the spyglass, even knowing the opportunities. “Forgive me, Lord.”
When unwelcomed change or unexpected pain comes barreling in, it’s easy to judge the outcome by the inconvenience of the interruption.
Why do we try to take pieces of our own understanding, and string them together to come up with our own explanation? Are we trying to grasp at an outcome that doesn’t require faith? While we might be praying that His will would be done, are we actually putting our hope in our own will instead?
Why do we settle for the view through a narrowed lens when we have access, because of Christ, to trust The One who sees the expanse of time and space? Actually, the One who transcends time and space. The One who isn’t bound by my understanding, who isn’t constrained by the explainable and seeable that fits into that tiny place. Why trust the limited view, when we can expand our view?
If we did, we would see The God who’s working (present tense) everything out for good, for those who love Him (Romans 8:28). I know we all know this, but can we just sit a moment and consider His working, is a working with us? “The meaning is, 'for them that love God, God coworking provides all things for good or so that it is well with them', reading God worketh all things with them for good)…” (Cf. Fritzsche, Ep. ad Romans, vol. ii, p. 193f)
I love this. We don’t get a pass on doing our part, faith and obedience, just because we lack understanding. We do get to adjust our eyes to see life from His view though, and when we can’t see anything at all, we just have to set our eyes on Him. He will show us what to do, where to go, in the perfect moment, in the perfect way.
"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind…” [James 1:5-6] It’s in the expanded view where we “lean not on our own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) and surrender to His grace that “gives liberally” (James 1:5), looking through life with faith-filled eyes because we know the God who “shall direct our paths” (Proverbs 3:6).
What if we really saw God for Who He is? For Who He revealed Himself to be in His word, by The Word Became Flesh? Maybe we would realize that our control-freak, narrow view was really a hardening in our heart toward His sovereignty, a hardening in our will towards surrendering to His goodness for His glory. Maybe if we would expand our view, we would see that our excuses for not believing are really a grasping for a pen to write our own story instead of allowing Him to write us into His. Maybe along the way we would see that the things we are hanging on to might be the very things keeping us in bondage…and then I wonder, why would we demand of the Bondage Breaker to leave those chains alone?
Anxiety, or just being overwhelmed by the daily-ness, is my clue that I’m narrowing my view again. When all around seems to be chaos and pressures of the “do, do and do some more” takes our freedom in Christ and shoves it through a lens of performance instead of productivity, or the view of “enough is enough” gets twisted into “your enough will never be enough”, I choose to exchange my spyglass for the expanse of God’s unending faithfulness.
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