Seeing as God Sees

By Peter Lundell –

Do you ever compare yourself to others who have a similar level of education and who don’t work any harder than you do, but who make lots more money or achieve a higher degree of recognition?

When I feel that way, I remember a different kind of people—and everything looks different. In countries all over the world live people who are smart, work hard, would have gotten academic degrees if they had the chance, and who give their lives to serving God or some cause. Yet they live in the poverty of an African village or a Southeast Asian jungle. Or they live under the religious oppression of a Middle Eastern society. Or they work in secret under the brutal North Korean regime. Many have no salary at all. For all their work they may receive only beatings. They may receive a prison cell. And some are tortured and killed.

We so easily forget these people, especially our brothers and sisters in faith. But God does not forget them. They are closer to His heart than we can know.

When I think of them, I ask myself what on earth am I thinking when I say I’m not making enough money or not being “successful” enough?

From God’s point of view, everything—everything—looks different from how we typically perceive things from our human point of view. Especially in a wealthy and free nation.

God does not watch TV, and he does not care who’s rich or famous. Second Chronicles 16:9 says, “The eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

Regardless of how your outward life appears, as your heart grows and you see as God sees, you’ll have spiritual wealth and recognition money can never buy.

PRAYER: Father, I commit to seeing as You see. May my eyes become like Yours. May Your thoughts become mine.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9 NIV).

Obituaries and Eternity

By Peter Lundell –

For a brief time I read obituaries in the newspaper—just for fun. It didn’t last long, because they got repetitious. Besides, reading about dead people can get morbid. Yet I learned something.

All the deceased were good people and were missed. Of course they were; people don’t spend money on obituaries for people they don’t like. I didn’t see any for jerks—no one missed them. Or if anyone really was bad, the description was whitewashed.

Each obituary listed the career highlights and accomplishments of the deceased. Some were impressive: degrees, important jobs, civic activities, and contributions. Most folks appeared to have been nice people, good people, ones we’d like if we met them. I found myself being impressed. I imagined meeting them during their lifetime and being impressed—even envious and wishing I had accomplished the things they had.

But there was always one catch: They were dead. This single fact changed everything. After reading all the impressive things they did, I found myself oddly unimpressed. I kept thinking, So what? Their life achievements are over, and now they’re in eternity.

I scoured each obituary for indications of whether they had prepared themselves for eternity. I can’t say whether they or not they did, but nothing was ever said about it. I’m sure some did and some didn’t. Some knew God and some had positively influenced others, but most centered their activities and accomplishments on themselves.

Crossing the line into eternity changes everything—everything that on this earth is impressive or important or worthwhile.

Someday people will read my obituary. Yours too. What if we live our brief lives in ways that reflect and prepare for eternity? After all, that’s where we’re all going. And besides, we’ll almost certainly end up living better lives.

PRAYER: “Lord, teach me to live with eternity in my heart, eternity in my thinking, eternity in my actions, and as I do to change the world I live in.”

BIBLE VERSE: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).

Seeing through Trees

By Peter Lundell –

Paralleling my mother’s apartment is a thick stand of trees. Summer grows an impenetrable green. Autumn drops the leaves to uncover winter skeletons of branches through which I see all houses on the other side. Spring buds restart the cycle.

The cycle helps me overcome temptation. Through the sameness of daily life and annual events, I’m tempted to feel a sense of permanence, as if the people I know will always be there and the things I do, I will continue to do. But behind the appearance of sameness lurks an ending. Always.

Children feel as if their parents will always be there to watch over them. Adults feel as if they’ll go to work at the same place for eternity. Meeting relatives or old friends feels as if they’ll always be there next season, and that I will too. For thousands of years people have probably felt the same way. But there always lurks an ending.

Most of us prefer permanence and sameness to change. We like familiar, predictable, and comfortable. But permanence and sameness are temporary, even illusory. So I’ve started to resist that sense of permanence, the feeling of sameness. To do so, I must willfully embrace change and accept that no one and nothing will be around forever.

And when I do that, I live better.

A sense of permanence and sameness lulls a person into a daze that can cloud life for decades. Change and the cycles of life are often challenging or agonizing. But embracing change—as Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “There is a time for everything”—prepares us for the difficulties.

And that wakes us up to live more fully here and now. Our hearts embrace and our minds understand God’s hand in life.

And our eyes just might discover our path into eternity.

PRAYER: “Father, open my eyes to see through the things in my life that seem so permanent, so the same. Enable me to see beyond them, where You will take me. I trust You to enable me to face whatever I must.”

BIBLE VERSE: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12, NIV).

Do You Have a Growth Commitment?

By Peter Lundell –

I often ask people how long their New Year’s resolutions last. Typically they seem to crash and burn sometime by the end of January. So life goes on as it did before.

Positive change must be addressed every day. It happens not by achievement but by habit.

I encourage people to chuck resolutions in favor of what I call “growth commitments” that I establish for each year. I’ve done annual growth commitments since 1986 that have led to major growth and changes in my life, which also makes my wife happy.

Think primarily in terms of personal character growth, not just paying off a credit card or losing weight. Those are fine, but if you relate them to deeper issues of character growth, you’ll go much deeper with the whole commitment and attain more overall results than you would otherwise. Go ahead and have other goals. But if you keep the growth commitment to one main thing, simply expressed, you will do well.

Two keys make it work: 1—Keep it simple and short, then write it on a on a small piece of paper (or PDA), and put it where you’ll see it daily, like on a mirror, in a wallet, as a bookmark, or whatever works for you. 2—Pray it, incorporate it into time you (hopefully) spend with God each day. And do it all year long. When you write it down and keep it where you’ll always see it, you enable yourself to consistently pray it.

Doing this accomplishes two other things: You bring God’s response into it, and you reorient your own thinking around the commitment. Change your thinking and you’ll change your behavior—especially if you seek God’s blessing each day.

What would your 2013 growth commitment be?

“Lord, my life is in Your hands. In this coming year mold me into your image and grow me beyond who I am now….”

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 29:11-13, NIV).

A Giant has Died

By Peter Lundell –

Steve Jobs revolutionized computer use so totally and pervasively that he changed the world. And all before his mid fifties. I lose my breath just thinking about the man’s prowess and accomplishments. And I write this on an iMac. I feel almost a personal loss.

He clawed his way up, was knocked down, and came back stronger. People with this combination of genius, creative innovation, and relentless pursuit come along once in a generation.

Given all that, I’m deeply thoughtful at his early death and what it means. He was the creative computing titan. He had all the money one could imagine; he had all the technology one could imagine. But neither could save him.

This leader and changer of the world was felled by cancer in his pancreas that couldn’t be fixed or upgraded. Before his diagnosis he didn’t even know what a pancreas did. I didn’t either.

I think of how little I’ve accomplished by comparison. I know I’ve done a lot that has eternal value—and that’s what God looks at, so I rejoice. Still it’s hard not to feel small, but that’s okay. Yet I have one thing that Jobs didn’t. One thing that all the money and technology in the world couldn’t buy for him or me: good health.

What a gift to have a healthy body. And I see so many people not taking care of the only one they have. Jobs would have given anything to be healed, yet he didn’t seem to have faith or anyone to pray with him.

So I’m left with the gravity of it all. And I think:

Be thankful for the gift others are to us—they could soon be
taken.

We are fragile, frighteningly fragile.

Whatever we accomplish or don’t accomplish, make sure to be in God’s hands.

PRAYER: “Lord, I sometimes feel so small, and at times I wonder what my life is, or has been, worth. In truth I am more fragile than I am aware; others have been taken from me, and someday I will be taken. Lead me to live each day in Your hands. . . .”

BIBLE VERSE: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’S love is with those who fear him.”(Psalm 103:15–17 NIV).

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