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July 7, 2017
How you think about God will determine who you become. You aren’t just the by-product of “nature” and “nurture.” You are a by-product
of your God-picture. And that internal picture of God determines how you see everything else. Most of our problems are not circumstantial. Most of our problems are perceptual. Our biggest problems can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of who God is. Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small. In fact, we reduce God to the size of our biggest problem.
The more we grow, the bigger God should get. And the bigger God gets, the smaller our lions will become.
God wants you to
get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go.
God is great not just because nothing is too
big for Him. God is great but because nothing is too small for Him either.
Faith is unlearning the senseless worries and misguided beliefs that keep us captive. It is far more complex than simply modifying behavior. Faith involves
synaptogenesis. Faith is rewiring the human brain.
Satan has two primary tactics when it comes to neutralizing you spiritually: discouragement and fear.
Courage is doing what is right regardless of
circumstances or consequences.
So here is my question: Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about?
It’s our past problems that prepare us for future opportunities. So someday we may be as grateful for the bad things as the good things
because the bad things helped prepare us for the good things.
sometimes the biggest problems present the greatest opportunities for God to reveal His glory and work His purposes.
We pray for comfort instead
of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through. We pray for no pain, when the result would be no gain.
But if God answered our prayer, it would rob us of our greatest opportunities. Many of our prayers would short-circuit God’s plans and purp...
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our problem isn’t our circumstances. Maybe our problem is our perspective.
He sees all the way around everything—every issue, every person, every experience,
every problem. Most of us see a very narrow slice of reality.
he stumbled upon what sociologist Robert Merton called the law of unintended consequences.
Sometimes God allows what His power could prevent. Most of the time that causes us a great deal of temporal angst, but someday we will owe God as many thank-yous for the prayers He did not answer as the ones He did.
Around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening.
So how do we zoom out? The one-word answer is worship.
Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God.
Reframing problems is about shifting focus.
It’s refocusing on the fact that God unconditionally loves me when I least expect it and least deserve it.
Worship is forgetting about what’s wrong with you and remembering what’s right with God.
It is like hitting the refresh key on your computer. It restores the joy of your salvation. It recalibrates your spirit. It renews your mind. And it enables you to find something good to praise God about even when everything seems to be going wrong.
one of the purest forms of worship is praising God even when you don’t feel like it, because it proves that your worship isn’t circumstantial.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”1
Joy is mind over matter.
A fascinating study done by Professor Vicki Medvec reveals the relative importance of subjective attitudes over and above objective circumstances. Medvec studied Olympic medalists and discovered that bronze medalists were quantifiably happier than silver medalists. Here’s why: Silver medalists tended to focus on how close they came to winning gold, so they weren’t satisfied with silver; bronze medalists tended to focus on how close they came to not winning a medal at all, so they were just happy to be on the medal stand. 2 How we feel isn’t determined by objective circumstances. If that were
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Great Piece to talk about on Perception
“Your focus determines your reality.”
I think there are basically two types of
people in the world: complainers and worshipers. And there isn’t much circumstantial difference between the two.
Complainers will always find something to complain about. Worshipers will always find something to praise God about. They sim...
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That is what worship does. It changes the spiritual atmosphere. It charges the spiritual atmosphere.
When you worship, it produces shock waves that register on the Richter scale.
when you worship God in the worst of circumstances, you never know what is going to happen next.
The circumstances you complain about become chains that imprison you. And worship is the way out. Worship reframes our problems and refocuses our lives. It helps us get through the bad days by reminding us of how good God is.
And when you are worshipful...
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are more open to notice the miracles that are happening all around you all the time. One way or the other, your focus determines your reality. The outcome of your li...
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Sickness helps us appreciate health. Failure helps us appreciate success. Debt helps us appreciate wealth. And the tough times help us appreciate the good times.
In the words of philosopher Walter Kaufmann: “It makes for a better life if one has a rendezvous with death.”
I’ve discovered that the worst days can actually turn out to be our best days if we learn the lessons God is trying to teach us. He wants us to learn to see bad experiences through the good we have gained from them.
No adversity equals no opportunity. Without those extremely adverse conditions, Benaiah would have faded from the script of Scripture.
Adversity is often the seedbed of opportunity.
