by R. Herbert | Nov 9, 2014 | Growth
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
The apostle Paul would certainly have agreed with that little saying. As someone who went from being one of the greatest persecutors of Christianity to one of its greatest servants, Paul knew, perhaps more than most of us, what a difference “changing the way you look at things” can make.
Paul came to see very clearly how conversion and coming to faith changes the way we see things entirely. Notice what he wrote to the Christians in Corinth regarding this change:
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer” (2 Corinthians 5:16).
Here, Paul shows how we begin to see not only God, but one another in a different light, to see with love rather than lust, jealousy, resentment, hatred and all the other ways in which our human nature, left to itself, can twist our view of the people around us.
But changing our viewpoint doesn’t just stop at initial conversion. It is an ongoing process. There are many times in the ongoing path of growth and transformation that we begin to feel that perhaps we should change in some way or do something we have not been doing. It is as if we feel a continuing pull to make the change, but we are not entirely convinced in our own minds that we want to do so. Perhaps we are not sure we want to give up something, or we are unsure of what the repercussions will be if we make some important change.
It’s at times like these that we need to remember that often we have to change before we see why we needed to change or realize that the changed situation is in fact better. There is nothing mystical in this – it just means that we need to step out and act, and then we begin to see the situation differently once we do. That’s when “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change“ comes in to play. Once we begin to turn from something we are coming to see is wrong, the more we stop wanting whatever it was. Once we begin to view a person we had disliked with an attitude of love, it’s surprising how often they seem to change for the better. And once we try doing something we may have feared or not wanted to have to do, we may find ourselves very happy that we did.
The important thing is to remember that spiritually we cannot wait until we see things differently – we must change, and then the different view develops naturally. It is very much like the situation Mark Twain described when he wrote: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” When we change, we change the way we see things – and it really is amazing how those things then change.
by R. Herbert | Nov 6, 2014 | Difficult Scriptures
Scripture in Focus: Luke 17:21
“Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21 KJV
Some Christians see this verse as a statement that the Kingdom of God is a somewhat ethereal thing - a principle at work “in men’s hearts
,” but is this really what Christ had in mind in discussing the Kingdom of God?
This scripture is actually a classic example of how carefully looking at context can be so important in understanding what the Bible says. When we read the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke we see that the context is very clear:
“Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it” (Luke 17:20-22).
Notice three things about this expanded context. First, Jesus was talking directly to the Pharisees – individuals he said were like “whited sepulchers that … on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean” (Matthew 23:27). It is clear from this context that Jesus would not have said the kingdom of God was within those hypocritical religious leaders of that day.
Second, notice that the phrase “within you” as it appears in the King James Version is more properly translated “in your midst” (as we see in the NIV, ESV, Holman and most other modern translations). Jesus was standing “in the midst” of the group of people with whom he was talking when he made this statement and he – and he alone – at that time represented the Kingdom of God.
Finally, we see that Jesus was, in fact, referring to himself in that he directly told his disciples that they would soon long to see him, but would not be able. He then continued to describe the events of his future return and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God (Luke 17:24-30).
So, rather than being an ethereal principle “within the hearts of men,” Jesus explained that the Kingdom of God was tied directly to him: that it was even then among mankind (see also Matthew 4:17), and that he would eventually return as King to rule the expanded kingdom as a tangible reality. That is why the New Testament speaks of us entering the Kingdom of Heaven (2 Peter 1:11) rather than it entering us.
God does place His Spirit within us (1 Corinthians 3:16, etc.), of course, and we can pray that God will let the rule of His Kingdom be established over our lives, but that is not the same as the idea that God’s Kingdom exists merely “within” us.
by R. Herbert | Nov 3, 2014 | Positive Living
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is one of the most well-known phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. It ranks the pursuit of happiness as an “unalienable right” which the Declaration affirms has been given to all human beings by their Creator.
The goal of human happiness is, of course, a totally worthy one with which few would disagree, but the words “pursuit of Happiness” can sometimes cause a misunderstanding. All too often we tend to think of happiness as a goal to be pursued, a thing to be chased, caught up with and captured; but there can be problems with this idea of pursuing happiness.
If we pursue happiness as a goal in itself, we never really find it. We have a whole book of the Bible – the Book of Ecclesiastes – reminding us of that truth. This is because happiness is not a commodity to be hunted and caught; it comes as a side-effect of what we do. We have only to read widely in literature to see that this has been something that wise men and women have understood for millennia – that rather than being an independent commodity we somehow gain, happiness is something we produce by what we do. Solomon found this (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26), and consider these few modern examples: Eleanor Roosevelt wrote “Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” That is what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he wrote “Some pursue happiness – others create it.” And the current Dalai Lama has said: “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
But if that was all there is to happiness, everyone would do things that made them happy and everyone would be happy – which we know is far from the truth. Unfortunately, many people short-circuit the production of happiness in a particular way. Writer Freya Stark summarized this: “There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” And remember that Jesus himself said, as he concluded the teaching of his disciples: “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them” (John 13:17 KJV).
There is an undeniable link between what we know and what we do. No matter what we do to try to produce happiness in our lives, our attempts will always be short-circuited if there is a gap between belief and practice, between our faith and our actions. Sometimes a little meditation on that fact is a far more effective way to get back to producing happiness in our lives than trying to chase happiness by seeking it some other way.
But a major lesson that we humans have learned through history is that we become happy as a result of what we do. So what particular actions make us happy? Once again we can look to Ecclesiastes to see that satisfying our every whim certainly does not produce happiness, and that chasing happiness is a “chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). But if we look again to the words of Christ “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them,” it is clear that “these things” are the things Jesus had taught his disciples – foremost of which are the principles of giving and serving. It is in this context that we should also remember Jesus’ words that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). It is no coincidence that the Greek word makarion – “blessed” also means “happy.” If we are doing these things we won’t have to pursue happiness because, invariably, happiness will come to us.
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