Looking through a new keyhole…
If you’ve never worn glasses, you may not understand what I’m about to talk about… If you have though, I’m expecting you may join me in one of my most desired wishes: Boundary-less vision. Without glasses, I can see blurry blobs. With my glasses I can see clearly……within the limits of the frames of my glasses.
Everything I see is held to the clarity defined by the lenses I place in front of my eyes.
Such is the way we see God and His character in the world around us. Often times those lenses in which we see God are shaped by one thing: circumstance.
When we shape our entire view of God based on one circumstance, we do ourselves a great disservice. That disservice is this: we only see the smallest possible glimpse of who God really is.
For example, when things are bad – we look through that lens and imagine a God who just doesn’t care enough about us to change things.
When things are good – we look through that lens and see a God who obviously is pleased with us and gives good gifts to those He loves.
Judging God’s whole character like this is similar to judging the value of a new house by only looking through a keyhole. We may see something – but it is far from complete. When we pick this mini-series of hard questions back up in July our topics will center around this very issue: keyhole vision.
The difference between seeing the entire character of God vs. judging everything based on circumstance is like putting my glasses on first thing in the morning: clarity.
James writes this: James 1:2 – 4 2Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.3For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.4So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
He is asking us to change how we view circumstance – It is time to look through a different keyhole.