When it gets Tough

 

Life will inevitably get tough from time to time and where we are living dictates how we react to life's speed bumps. Have you ever noticed how your parents treat your children, their grandchildren, differently than they treated you. At first you are upset that they don't pitch a holy fit over the grandkids spilling drinks on their floor or them writing on the walls or their constant messes. Instead they say, that's OK, it's just a little mess, no big deal. Yet you remember, like it was yesterday, when you spilled Kool-Aid on the carpet and then tried to clean it up with the white bath towels. Yeah, they didn't think it was OK back then. Instead you got beat with a wooden spoon and grounded for a week. Just for clarification, that didn't happen to me. I did other capital punishment crimes that I was beaten for instead.

Anyway, the difference between them raising you and them babysitting your kids is that they have gained insight, perspective and understanding. They have dealt with more stuff over time than they had when they were raising you. As they grew older, patience was formed in them more and attachment to stuff has waned. They are more care free as they have paid off there house and cars and they have more time for leisure activities. When they were younger, they only had time to work, eat, sleep, change diapers and constantly clean up after your messes. 

So, what am I trying to get at. The grandparents have a more relaxed position than the parents. The parents are always stressed out and the grandparents are not. The situations are different so the output of emotions are different. We as humans trend towards that situation. We are good when we are not under stress but watch us fall apart when we are. It's a common thing yet it doesn't have to be. 

What would happen to the parents if they got all the perspectives and understandings that the grandparents had yet the situation didn't change. The stress levels change now because those two things help us deal with the stress. If we have a totally different perspective on something, it may not hold the stress for us like before. If we understand the situation better, it may not stress us out either. 

All this to say, while we are walking in faith in God, He will change our perspective and understanding. He will change our idea of who we are in Him and our idea of who people are around us. He won't change the messes but He will change how we perceive and understand them. So much so, that we see those messes as a non-issue. When we see through His eyes, the world changes before us. We no longer strive for anything to do with self. Self cannot be seen through His eyes and if self cannot be seen then those around us are not seen through self but through Love. Seeing through our selfish eyes is like the parent always worried about themselves functioning and getting others to function how they want them to, hence the conflict. However, through God's eyes we see the children (people) with Love and it changes how we interact with them. 

God sees differently than we do. His perspective and understanding is higher than ours and is filtered through love instead of self. When we walk in Him, our vision becomes His vision and our ways become His ways. It's a by product of our faith in Him. We cannot try to see as He does and we cannot mimic His vision, we can only submit to His Spirit in us through faith. Only then will we change. 

It says, that love will follow them who believe. It's a litmus test for Christians. If you are a Christian and you hate or are mad or aggravated or hurt or anything other than full of love for people, then you my friend are not walking in faith in God. You may say you have faith in God but you don't have faith in Him to handle every thought, emotion or feeling you have. You don't have the faith in Him to let go of your control. You're believing in Him to provide you a blessed day and a blessed life but you don't trust in Him to walk you through any situation that's not comfortable for you.

I chose to use the grandparents scenario to contrast the differences. I know some grandparents out there are more grumpy than they were as parents so just go with it and humor me. My ultimate goal here is to point out our own deception and the comprised life we live before Him. Again, if 2 + 2 isn't equalling up to 4 then something is wrong with the way we are living.

For now, I'll leave it here. However, tomorrow's post will be about compromise. 

 

I love y'all 

To God be the Glory!