Looking at Life Thru God's Glasses: Negative Circumstances or Positive Responses

LOOKING AT LIFE THRU GOD’S GLASSES: NEGATIVE CIRCUMSTANCES OR POSITIVE RESPONSES – PART 10

What we see in life depends on the glasses through which we are looking. When we look through human glasses, we can only see negative circumstances. When we see things through God’s glasses, we can see positive responses. Which glasses we look through is a choice we make.

When I was working on a graduate degree at Princeton, I read Viktor E. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. It had a huge impact on my life.

Frankl, an Austrian-born psychiatrist, wrote the book from a Nazi concentration camp where most of his family was murdered. When he was rescued, he started a new kind of therapy based on the fact that it is not the circumstances that determine a person’s outcome, but a person’s attitude towards those circumstances.

The Nazis thought they took everything he had. Frankl said, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what happens to me. I choose my attitude in any given circumstance.”

In life, we all have to face some extremely tough and unexplainable situations. Many of them are unfair and unjust. It’s easy to have a negative response to tough circumstances. That only causes us to spiral downward mentally, physically, and spiritually.

We can choose to respond to circumstances in a different way. God has given us His promise that He will be with us. He will strengthen us and sustain us. He will reveal positive possibilities.

Throughout my ministry, I have seen people face similar difficult circumstances – such as a death, a loss of a job, a bad health report, etc. What I’ve noticed is that some people are devastated and become very negative about people and life. Negativity has a way of multiplying, and the deeper the hole one digs, the tougher it is to get out of it.

I’ve seen other people face the same situation, yet ask God how to respond in that situation. They place their trust in Him. You are not in charge of circumstances. You are in charge of how you respond to circumstances.

Twelve spies went in to check out the Promised Land. Ten of them came back and reported that the circumstances were impossible to overcome. The place was occupied by giants, and they would be stepped on like grasshoppers.

But a minority report came back from two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb. They responded by acknowledging the circumstances, but they were not going to let the circumstances dictate the outcome for the people of Israel. They were going to trust God for that. They said that the place was occupied by giants, but their God was greater than the giants. And they must take the land. (Numbers 13:25-30)

My God is greater than anything that I will ever face. I have a choice. I’m going to choose to see life from the perspective that God is in control of things, and not just negative circumstances. Satan will take away a lot of things from me, but he can never take away my choice of how I will respond to circumstances.

It’s your choice – negative circumstances or positive responses!