When I was a leader of my church’s youth group, I had the same kids come to me about the same things. What will get them into heaven, how to honor God in all you do, their problems in life, those things. Whenever I talk to those kids about their life problems and the things that bother them, I always ask the following question:
Are you seeing things in God’s Eyes or Your own eyes?
I constantly asked that question because if I know this current generation of young people; I know that they are gonna choose to see what they wanna see or see things that they think they remember, and react accordingly. In other words, Selective Perception. It’s common. Very common in this world. For example, Let’s say I’m a Michael Jordan fan. Let’s say I grew up watching him, saw all of his games. Massive fan. I wouldn’t care what people say about Lebron James. In my mind, Lebron is not better than MJ. You can tell me what ever you want, I’m not listening.
Now for the 98% of people reading this and have no clue about anything sports, let me flip it for you. Let’s say I was trying to park my car, and someone tries to go for the same parking spot I’m going for. Me and the other guy argue, and then a 3rd person comes in and tells me the other guy was there first. From there I would tell him that I don’t care what he says, it’s my spot. I was there first, I was closer to the spot, it’s mine.
Selective perception. Anyway, you could say that the question I asked earlier is very relevant in your life, in different ways.
How you view your problems?
Now, I know we are all going through a lot. It’s a crazy time. For me personally, it’s a lot to handle. My depression is kicking in from time to time, I’m constantly going crazy about how I’m gonna do when I officially start my new job in a few weeks, despite the fact that I had my welcome orientation and training a week before all the lockdowns happened. I’m constantly debating if I’m going back to my church or go to a new church once all the church services start to open up, given the fact that there was already problems between me and my home church before all of this craziness started happening.
Now with all of that said, there’s two ways of handling it. I could A) see things through that Selective Perception and push everyone away and run from my problems, and constantly be in a state of panic. Or B) see things through God’s Eyes, and see that I need to work out some of those problems before doing anything crazy.
How you view Society?
This is self explanatory.
A problem occurs with someone. I could see that person through your eyes, and think he’s a jerk that is irritating the heck out of me: or through God’s eyes and see that that person is angry and hurting and is simply reacting to a situation.
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Or even in general, I could see people the way I want to see them. Ranging from “I love being around people” to “Ehhhh…… They’re alright. I don’t care” to “I extremely dislike everybody”. Or see them in God’s eyes and see that they all are (as said in Genesis) made in the image of God.
How do you see yourself?
I’ve been known to have very bad self esteem issues, of which I’m working on. At my lowest, I hated everything about myself, and constantly felt like a failure in everything I do. A lot of it stemmed from things that happened in the past. Being blamed for things I didn’t do, and just pushing people away because of it.
Anyway, I got to a point where I needed to see myself in God’s eyes, because the way I saw myself was toxic.
So I did. I went and pursued God. Through reading the Bible, going to church, surrounding myself with Godly people. As of now, I still don’t see myself as amazing or phenomenal as God does, but I don’t see myself the way I used to. All because I made a choice.
And that is what I’m getting at here. You always have a choice. It’s all about asking God to renew your mind and give you clarity. I leave you with two scriptures.
“As a man thinks in his heart so is he.” Proverbs 23:7
“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.” Matthew 6:22(Message Bible)
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