Your Perspective on God

Last night I had an epiphany about how the perspective or beliefs that people have about God determines whether they recognize the blessings around them no matter how small, or whether they think that only others receive blessings from God. Let me break this down further for you.

If you know the truth of what the Bible says then you know that we have a good God, that is loving. In fact God is love and love is God. 1 John 4:8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God is not hateful and angry, just waiting to take you out or cause something bad to happen. No, God as modeled by our beloved Jesus is compassion, empathy and unconditional love. God loves you, even when you don’t love God. Think about it, God the creator, our beloved Father in Heaven, loves you and he wants you to be blessed and to live a blessed life.

If you love someone you want only the best for them, you would not give them something terrible as a gift and you would not purposely bring disaster and harm to them. No you would give them good things, make sure that their needs were met, that they did not go hungry, that they had shelter, you would make sure they had nice things. This can even be reflected in how some people care for their pets, lavishing the pets with toys, and all kinds of things that the pet doesn’t really need. So, if God is love, why would you think God would not do the same for you?

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16 NKJV) Yes, God loves the world and we were created for his enjoyment, for God to have great pleasure in sharing in our lives. It does not say God so hated the world!!!! So just think for a moment, God loves the world and we are part of the world, we were created in his image. Yes, every one of us are a creation from God. This loving Father, and Creator just wants to have a relationship with you, and to shower you in his love and adoration. He is like a jealous lover that does not want to share you with another. But even in jealousy God does not stop loving us.

So God loves us and he created us. What in this makes you think that God would then cause terrible things to happen to you? For every parent must discipline their children, but that discipline is done with love, so that the child comes to know what is right and wrong. God is no different, there are times that we may have to be corrected, but God is sweet and kind as the Holy Spirit highlights in our hearts the things that have grieved the Father. In the act of repentance we admit our guilt, we take accountability and we get restored in our relationship with the Father.

This loving Father that lavishes good things upon us. Why, every day we get on earth is a blessing from the Lord. Every breath in our lungs, as you stop and think about it there are a lot of things in life that we take for granted, yet in actuality, they are little blessings from God. My husband and I thank God every morning when we awake, for we are allowed another day to bless others and to see the love of God in creation.

Yet there are those that have never known a good earthly Father, and so they think that God is mean, angry and out to get them at every step, they are constantly on guard, just waiting for the hammer of justice to come crashing down upon them. They have a perception and belief that all Fathers are bad and evil. Why did I get this evil person for a Father, if God is good. Well there is this thing called free will and it all comes down to choices that we make. Yes it always comes back to us and the choices that we make. Sometimes we are born out of the choices that our parents made. It has never been the heart of God the Father for any of us to be beaten, abused, molested or anything else that is not good from our earthly Parents, however, we live in a fallen world, filled with choices that people have made. They can be misguided choices filled with hate and anger, or you just may be walking around with a victim spirit. What words are you speaking over yourself or have others spoken over you? What beliefs are guiding your thoughts?

You see, Satan is the Prince of deception and lies. Satan is an expert at twisting our thoughts, and our beliefs because he is jealous that God is more powerful. The Prince of lies and deception is wanting you to worship him rather than God the Father and creator. Satan likes to get us to believe that we are powerless, that there is no hope, that everyone is against us, the longer this goes on the more powerless and hopeless we can feel. We start to feel overwhelmed and things like depression and anxiety come over us. Some people may even begin to think that nothing good happens for them, that they don’t deserve anything good. Or that voice I deserve this because I am such a bad person. That is a lie that plagued me for years, until I discovered that it was a lie, and that I did not deserve punishment like a terrible illness, or loss of a marriage.

If we had a parent that was not good, we may start to believe, oh well if there is a God, he just hates me and wants to destroy my life. But these are all lies. Our perceptions and beliefs are what determine how we see God and whether we see blessings around us or punishment around us. If we don’t know the truth of what the Bible says and we only go based upon what others say, we may not even know the truth. For I discovered that many things that I was told were in the bible are not there at all, yet for centuries things have been said or spoken as being biblical. It is just another deception from Satan. When you start to read the bible and to seek wisdom from God, then the lies start to be revealed. It can be like ripping a bandaid off a wound and ugly truth is revealed. Yet, as the blinders are taken off our eyes, we begin to see hope in the middle of the disaster. Even in the hardest times of our life we can find hope. I found hope and restoration in the middle of caring for a Mother with dementia, yet God showed me the hope in restoring a relationship with her as I cared lovingly for her. My husband found blessing in the midst of pain, thanking God that he could actually feel the pain, and was not numb to it. If we look for bad things we will find them and if we look for good things we will find those. Our perceptions and beliefs drive what we are looking for. Is there going to be a scorpion ready to strike under the rock, or a beautiful gem that has been hidden just for me.

My prayer is that everyone that reads this takes a moment and starts to seek truth and wisdom from God. For all believers that have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, have received the Holy Spirit that resides in their heart. The Holy Spirit is our direct connection to God through Jesus, and is our comforter, our teacher, and gives all wisdom and knowledge. The sacrifice that was made on the cross was not just for your salvation, it was to also bring you back into restoration with the Father, it was to rescue us from our tormentor and enemy, “Satan”. We have been set free by Jesus, and we have been restored. Let today be the first day of you living your life filled with hope and truth.