The God Perspective

When we look to the world for answers we go astray. We need God’s perspective if we are going to have a chance at living an abundant life.

Open my eyes , that I may see Wonderous things from Your law. I am a stranger on the earth. Don’t hide your commandments from me” – Psalm 119:18-19

I was reading a story on perspective that other day that explains this perfectly:

A young boy was playing outside his farm and found an eagle’s egg. He put the egg in a chicken’s nest. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the eagle thought he was a chicken; he did what chickens do. He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers, no more than a few feet above the ground. After all, that’s how chickens are supposed to fly. Years passed. One day, he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong wings. “What a beautiful bird!” He said to the chicken near by, “What is it?” That’s an eagle -the chief of birds, the chicken clicked. “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.” So the eagle never gave it another thought. And he lived out of the rest of its life living under the delusion that he was a chicken.

Having a God perspective is important part of living a godly life. How do we change our state of mind? How do we change our circumstances when trouble comes our way? How do we remain full of joy, hope, peace even when trouble comes.

I think we can learn a things or two about David. David had victory because he had a God perspective not King Saul’s. If we’re going to have victory in our lives we will have to learn to see ourselves, our circumstances, and our future through God’s eyes.

Our eyes are often clouded by our own judgments, experiences, and preconceptions. We have told ourselves for too long that it can’t be done. We’ve created self-fulfilling prophecies and unless we change our thinking it will never be done. The God perspective is about removing the scales of our human understanding from our eyes and seeing things as they really are.

In order to understand David and King Saul’s history We need a little background with the state of affairs in Israel at the time.

Prior to Saul becoming King over Israel, the only King they had known was God. And while God had not changed, the people’s hearts had. Even though they saw miracles without end, even though they had been brought out of Egypt at the leadership of Moses, they crossed over through the Jordan on dry land, and established a land, the people still wanted to have a King like other nations of the earth.

And what thing about God, if we ask, he will give us what we want.

1 Samuel 8:1-5 tells us when Samuel was old, he made his sons judges in Israel, but they were unjust and took bribes. The elders of Israel went to Samuel and said to him, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But this displease Samuel. He prayed to God, and God answered “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being King over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you” (1 Samuel 8:7-8).

God told Samuel “Obey their voice and make them a king.” King Saul was chosen but Saul despised David. He was jealous, butter, and hated him, for having a different anointed. Yet David chose to have a God perspective through all of Saul’s attempts to destroy his reputation or kill him.

Just like in Israel in those days we live in a culture today, where expediency had taken precedence over truth. People are far too weak and are pushed aside in the name of what is easier, what is cheapest, and what is most efficient. We have made a graven image to efficiency in the world we live in, and to cost us our perspective of truth. And can destroy us as a culture if we’re not careful.

We have to have God’s perspective in our lives. When our vision is clouded by what we see in the world. If we are different from the world around us, then good.

In the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 “For the Message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written ‘ I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”

The people of God in choosing to look like the world, to embrace the wisdom of the world, to embrace the vain and empty philosophies of the world, always goes astray and gets into trouble. When the people of God abandon a plain and clear understanding of God’s perspective in their lives, whether personally or corporately, we become like a ship with no rudder, like a boat which had gone astray, our only hope for sure footing become to crash into the shore.

Why do God’s people allow themselves to be led into all kinds of modern ideas? Why are so many believers compelled to believe that because modern science says that life evolved from “lightening striking a mud puddle” we must find some sort of “middle ground” between the Genesis account of creation and evolution?

Why are the people of God intimidated intellectually into accepting “middle ways” of understanding when the Bible offers life-changing, timeless truth? Anytime the people of God compromise the truth of God by taking their eyes off God’s plan, they are influenced by the surrounding culture.