New perspectives

It is said that one of the key factors that affect the quality of our lives is attitude. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond because bad things happen to everyone. Today we want to examine our perspectives and how they affect our lives.

The first question is what is “perspective”, and why is it important? Perspective or attitude reflects the way that we think about something or someone; the way I respond to something or someone, or the things that I do or don’t do as a result of how I view things. This affects the quality of my life and my relationships with other people. Pause for a moment and reflect on some particularly difficult relationship.e.g someone who just’offsets’ you for one reason or another. In most cases our perspectives are shaped by what we believe about ourselves, or other people. Sometimes it is simply dependent on whether we have positive or a negative view.i.e whether the glass is ½ full or ½ empty.

We could look at two practical examples. Many of you say that you don’t like school. That’s how you feel but you do not take into consideration that a large portion of children and young people do not have the educational opportunities that you do. Of even foods, we don’t like this or that. We don’t eat this or that, yet only 2/3 of the world’s population is well fed, 1/3 is underfed and 1/3 is starving.

We want to allow the Word of God to change our perspectives.

Phil.1:3.>6.—Here we are encouraged to give thanks for the people in our lives. Phil. 1:12>14. We are to give thanks even for difficult situations. When we look at the account in Acts 16:16>34, we find the Apostle Paul in Philippi with Silas. They are doing God’s will, preaching the gospel. This offended some persons, so they were arrested [vs.22] .The magistrates tore off their clothes, had them beaten and thrown into prison. How would you respond?

The normal response would be anger at God for failing to protect or for failing to deliver from this injustice, because after all they were doing His will! They could have quit and gone home defeated, but instead midnight finds them in prison, in pain and singing praises to God. The result was a mighty deliverance as an earthquake shook the jail. This led to the salvation of the jailor and his family. That place was changed to the extent that later the Apostle Paul could write a letter to the church at Philippi. Here’s another thought, if they had gone home, the book of Acts could have ended at chapter 16 and not 28, because there would not have been any more missionary journeys. Their perspectives and the resulting actions had a lasting positive impact on the New Testament church.

We also have a powerful example of how a negative perspective can impact on lives in the Bible. Let’s look at Numbers chapter13. Here we have 12 spies. All of them are leaders sent to search out the promised land. All saw exactly the same thing – a fruitful land with walled cities and giants but if we look at verses 30 and 31 we see how different their perspectives were and what actions they took. Ten men saw themselves as totally inadequate for the challenge, or as grasshoppers in their own eyes, and discouraged the people. Numbers 14:1” And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.” The other two agreed but they said let’s go for it because if God is for us we can take this land. The people were influenced by the negative report to the extent that they wanted to stone them. They caused a whole nation to sin against God and be judged.[vs.23 +24].