Joyful Yes

As I am about to enter into my senior year of high school, I find myself being bombarded with questions such as these.  Do you know what you want to major in?  Where are you going to college?  Have you started thinking about what kind of career you want once you graduate college?  Where are you going to apply to?  What scholarships are you going to go for?  And others of that nature.  I don't blame the people who ask me these questions.  They are natural questions to ask an upcoming senior classman.  The only reason they seem to bother me is because I can't answer them with certainty.  My answer is usually along the lines of, "Well, right now, my number one college choice is here," and, "I think I want to major in this."  And, me being the over-thinker that I am, these questions raise even different ones in my own head (that again, I don't have answers for).  What is my calling in life?  Where am I going to be in 5 years from now?  And then I begin entertaining the things I believe to be the "worst case scenarios."  What if God asks me to move to the city?  What if I hate my job?  What if I mess everything up? 

Only then, after I have allowed myself to worry myself into a frenzy, do I seem to remember what God says about my future.  He says, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." (Matthew 6:34) 

Then, here is the wisdom I usually respond with.  "I could stop worrying, if I could just know the answers to all my questions!"  I know, true wisdom right?.......NOT!!!  If the peace in my heart depended on knowing all the answers, then why would I even need God?  If I had all the answers, I wouldn't need God.  Because I would be God.  Humans haven't changed much, have we?   Being like God, isn't that why Adam and Eve ate that apple in the garden?  Because they wanted to be like God?  And here I am, thousands of years later, doing the exact same thing. 

By demanding all the answers, I am telling God, "I don't need You; I can do this on my own if I just knew the answers.'  I am trying to become like God.  But here's the secret, I'm not Him!  I never will be!  Oh, that I would learn to trust Him like Ester did when she went to see the king, not knowing if she would live through the encounter.  That I would learn to trust Him like Mary, Jesus' mother, who said yes even when she had no idea what would happen to her.  She could've been stoned to death, or lived out her days as an unmarried mother, shunned by her community.  But these amazing women trusted God enough to go forward, without the answers.

So how do we respond?  How do we live without the answers?  We tell Him yes.  Yes to anything and everything He might ask of us because we know His plans are for our good, to prosper us and not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11).  If we trust that His plan is best, we don't need the answers.  We don't need to know everything God will ask us to do.  Because we already know our answer.  Yes.  A trusting, joyful yes!

Lens of Love

 

Have you ever looked at a professional photographer’s pictures?  They are amazing!  The colors are so crisp, the lighting so perfect.  It just looks so good, like it could jump off the page at you.  Now compare that to the pictures you take with your smart phone.  Not quite so impressive.  The light is probably a little harsh or dark.  It might be a little blurry.  It’s a decent picture, but not as good as the professional one.  Now think about a picture taken with your very first camera.  My very first camera was a long, thin thing that had film in it and printed the picture out of the camera as soon as you took it.  Seemingly pretty awesome, until you take into account that the pictures it took were about 1 inch by 2 inches!  You could barely tell who anyone in the picture was!  What makes the difference between the pictures?  What makes the difference between the clear, crisp professional pictures and the mini, blurry pictures taken with my first camera?

It’s the lens.

The right lens makes all the difference.  The lens determines the amount of light that is let in.  Without the proper lens, your picture will be dark and you won’t be able to see it clearly.  If you have smudges on the lens; your picture will be blurry.  Not because there’s something wrong with the subject of the picture, but because there’s something wrong with the lens.  The lens makes all the difference in a photo.  The question I ask myself is this.

What kind of lens am I looking at people through?

I am often very critical of myself.  I judge myself very harshly, making sure that I’m not going to mess things up.  This stems from insecurities that I have dealt with since I was a child.  I’ve always felt that I’m never going to be good enough.  So, I judge myself a lot.  The enemy is constantly whispering to me that I am not good enough.  And, often, that’s the way I see others too.  When I look at others, instead of looking at them through the lens of God’s love, I look at them through the lens of my own insecurities.  I sit there and nitpick their lives to pieces, overanalyzing things, because that’s what I do to myself.  Instead of loving them where they are, I see them as not good enough.  The enemy uses my own insecurities to keep me from loving others.  He whispers the same lies into my head about them that he does about me.  I have smudges on my lens that keep me from seeing the subjects in my life as they truly are.  My lens doesn’t let in enough light so that I can see people clearly, the way God sees them. 

God sees them, and me, through the lens of love, Jesus’ love.  Because of what He did on the cross, the minute we say yes to Him, we are covered with His blood.  Our sins are paid for.  God now sees us through the lens of the blood of Jesus.  How amazing is that?!?  That doesn’t mean we are perfect, or that God doesn’t know when we sin.  It means that, through Him, we are good enough.  Not on our own, never on our own, but through Jesus, we are more than conquerors!  It means that grace is extended to us when we deserve judgment.  How can I see others through any other lens?  How can I look at them and judge them when I am only a sinner in need of forgiveness every day of my life?  I’m not saying that we should condone sin, in our lives or in others’ lives.  Grace does not give us a license to sin.  What I am saying is that we have to see people through the right lens.  Your smudge may be different than mine is.  I don’t know how you see yourself or others.  This is just something that God has revealed to me that I have been doing, often to the people closest to me, my Christian brothers and sisters.  I’m being critical when I need to be encouraging.  Because I see them through the lens of my insecurities instead of the lens of God’s crazy amazing love.  People don’t need me to judge them; that’s not my job.  They need me to love them.  Jesus Himself said that the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself.  And I can only love them if I see them through the lens of God’s love.

How do we fix it?  How do we see people through God’s lens?

We let Him clean the lens.

We allow Him to wipe the smudges off so we can see clearly.  Sometimes, we let Him completely replace the lens because it was cracked or didn’t work right.  We ask Him to give us His lens instead of ours.  So that we can see people the way He does.  Seeing their sin, their faults, and loving them all the time.  Sometimes, lovingly correcting, sometimes lovingly encouraging.  But always loving.  Because that’s what God is.  God is love. 

Lord, I pray for You to help us see people the way You see them.  Let us not look at their faults and judge them for their faults.  Let us look at them and see what You see.  Fallen people, being made whole by a loving God.  If we need to correct someone, hold someone accountable, I pray we do it in love.  Otherwise it will drive people away.  It’s not our job to judge.  Lord, help us to see the difference between discernment and judgment.  Help us love people the way You love them.  Help us see the world through Your lens of love.