Sunday God Meets Monday MomMostră

The girls love to play with diving rings in the swimming pool. As they were playing the other day, I noticed they were getting all the colors wrong.

“Get that purple one,” Maya would say, pointing to a blue one.

“Here’s the orange one!” Everly would beam, holding up a yellow one.

At first I wondered if this was some kind of complicit game because they weren’t correcting one another. I seemed to be the only one who disagreed. I continued to puzzle over this for a while, and when I realized the answer, I had to laugh.

The girls were wearing their swimming goggles to dive and get the toys. In true girl style, their goggles have pink lenses, which affects their perception of the colors of everything around them. Neither of them noticed that anything was out of the ordinary because they were both seeing the same distorted colors.

READ

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2, NIV)

APPLY

Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to figure out what God’s will is? It is because of our goggle vision. Living in the world distorts our view away from God’s perspective, and this phenomenon happens collectively. A lens through which a culture views life slowly tints over time until the entire group clearly agrees that something is what it truly isn’t. We don’t even realize our mistaken perspective because it is the same as those around us.

We can only see our circumstances and decisions as they truly are when we take on the un-tinted perspective of God. When we read His Word and ask for His wisdom, He removes the colored lens from our eyes and allows us to see with the crisp clarity that He does. Our distorted lenses in life allow us to excuse sinful patterns, regularly entertain judgmental thoughts, and perpetuate harmful habits. Our own motives and goals of success, pride, happiness, and reputation obscure God’s desires for us.

God's goals are far different. It is only when we allow Him to take off our tainted mindset that we will see the beauty in His good plans for us, which are often marked by far different characteristics: pain, patience, loss, and surrender.

PRAY

Father, thank You for not only having a godly perspective of my life, but for making good plans for me from that eternal view. Help me see my life from Your view and not the world’s. Transform my mind and renew my heart.

REFLECT

In what way am I resisting God’s will because it doesn’t fit my perspective? What distorted view does that reveal?