Perspective

Sometimes life can just be, well - you know, it can be laborious.  With all the challenges, issues and personal things we deal with, we are constantly inundated with electronic images & stories reminding us that we live in difficult days.  From the economic challenges at home to disputes in the abroad, life can be arduous.  As a chaplain at the MBPD, I often meet with families in great crisis and occasionally meet with the officers to help them process through a traumatic event.  Accordingly, it is vital for our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well being to have a healthy perspective on life.

I often remind the family at the fellowship where I pastor that this time on earth is oh but a minute speck of time in relationship to eternity.  We often encourage one another to have an eternal perspective, an everlasting view of life.  K.P. Yohannan, the founder of Gospel for Asia, prays every day that eternity would be imprinted on the inside of his eye lids. 

My favorite Rabbi, the One I refer to often in these short articles, told his follower's one day, 

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

  

I like to call this perspective, a healthy directive to set the affections of my heart toward those things that really matter.  You see, if we take our focus off of the problems around us, our own hurts, hang ups and bad habits, and place the affections of our heart on to things that really matter, our perspective radically changes.

We just completed a wonderful series at Rock Harbor that dealt with perspective.  I preached for six weeks on purpose and meaning, a very practical look at why we exist.  This short sermon series encouraged each attendee to take a healthy look at their own life and ask that significant question, "Why am I here?"  We came to the conclusion that we were put on this earth to worship God with everything we are.  And, in so doing, not only is God honored, we are completely satisfied in that journey.  John Piper, an author and minister from Minnesota, put it this way, "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him." 

Further, I've learned in my journey that to the extent I set the affections of my heart toward the eternal, all the while cultivating a relationship with my Maker, my emotions, my mental, my physical and my spiritual man is all the more content.  In fact I try to be intentional in keeping perspective.  Namely, I do my best to eat healthy, engage in consistent exercise, take time out for me to chill and I actively stimulate my mind by reading.  When I'm faithful in these areas, life takes on a different slant and my perspective then is focused on those things above.

In a day that bleeds with challenges and concerns, I encourage you to shift your perspective onto the eternal.  Also, ask yourself these questions, "Why am I here?  What is my purpose?"  In so doing, I'm confident your life and perspective will be altered for the good and for the eternal. 

Have a great day and as always, thanks for reading...