The Weight Of Perspective

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To the diligent faithful, I apologize in advance for what may seem somewhat redundant and potentially confrontational. It's not my goal to be either. But there may be some that this speaks to. And if it does, then my heart cries out for them to not only hear it, but to gain from it.
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The struggle for human achievement and notoriety is an old one. History is full of achievers and notable people and I'm not suggesting that it's necessarily a bad thing. But from a personal perspective, having invested a number of years in life so far I've come to a humbling, yet not defeating conclusion: There's nothing that I have ever done and nothing that I could possibly do that would ever have the smallest chance of equaling what's already been done for me - the greatest example being Christ's sacrifice of course, but so much more well beyond that.

Personal life fact: on a 1 - 10 scale of things that count in Father God's examination of my life, there are a number of things that I was rather proud of in the past that don't even get out of negative ratings territory - of this, I'm comfortably certain. It's not that those things were bad in and of themselves. Some of them would rate rather well in terms of individual human accomplishments when all things were taken into account- as viewed by other humans. But they're subject to a matter of perspective and in attempting to assess their value, the perspective used becomes the critical defining element of that valuation process. Ultimately, there's only one perspective that really matters ... and I guarantee you it's not human.

When considering view points that matter, the old saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" takes on a whole new level of importance when you begin to substitute the words good, justice, fairness, righteousness, etc. for the word "beauty". In that exercise I don't think any believer would dispute that the one "beholder" that matters more than any other is none other than our God Himself. In the end His view of these things will be the only view that matters ... period. It won't matter what the scoffers say - their opinions won't have any effect to determine the course of our future (their future, maybe). It won't matter what respected world leaders or scholars contrive in order to make their own inclinations "accepted". It won't even matter what our friends or family think at that final moment of accounting - they'll have to answer for themselves. At the end of this life the judgment of everything we've done, said, or that we've been a part of in any way, will hang on the perspective of one being - and it won't be them ... and it won't be you or me. 

So, it seems reasonable that a wise person would adjust their perspective to that one viewpoint that does count and make it their own as much as possible in order to be in agreement with the unshakable perspective that will govern both final judgment and the endless length of eternity. I would humbly challenge all, including myself, to ponder the possibility of having to stand alone before the terrifying power that created the universe from nothing with the realization that you or I had accepted, believed or perhaps even promoted an untruth against what that same power had already declared, ... and to begin to adjust our own perspective if needed (quickly). None of us is going to want to be - "that guy".


Jesus warned us that there would be an effort to deceive even those who follow Him in the last days and one would assume that the deception would have to be fairly artful to deceive the elect (and those looking at the world, society and scripture holistically might agree that it does look like we could be walking those very days). But in giving it serious thought, how hard would it really be to deceive the elect if they weren't checking their own perspective often to make sure that it matches God's while being continually bombarded with worldly, intellectual viewpoints that may not necessarily agree with what He's already said? There are so many voices making an effort to vie for our attention every day.

To make matters worse, it would seem that there are some in the world that have decided that since so much time has passed since the recording of God's previous declarations, that there's a need to update the definitions of what's acceptable to get Him current with society. What they don't seem to be considering is that this could likely bring them in direct defiance of what He's already declared. They could be faced with that realization and its potential consequences as they one day stand before Him. They'll be powerless to change Him with their most potent intellectual reasoning ... because He never changes. 

I don't think that any true believer has any desire to find themselves deceived or in conflict with what Father God in His perfection and omnipotence has declared. So how would we know where we stand with His perspective and determinations. And how do we defend ourselves against the deception that Jesus so gracefully warned us about? 

In a quote from an article from Christianity Today back in September of 2012, Ed Stetzer said the following; 

"We've released new research as part of the Transformational Discipleship study that shows only 19% of churchgoers personally (not as part of a church worship service) read the Bible every day. That is roughly the same as those who responded "Rarely/Never" (18 percent). A quarter of respondents indicate they read the Bible a few times a week, and 14% say they read the Bible "Once a Week" while another 22 percent say "Once a Month" or "A Few Times a Month." (Note that "churchgoers" does not mean "born again" or other things-- just what is says. We will look at more on that in future research releases.)"

In July of 2015, he visited the subject again in the same publication;

"When was the last time you read a book? For almost 1 in 4 of us, it was more than a year ago, according to Pew Research. That's three times the number who didn't read a book in 1978. In America, we have a literacy problem. But more concerning to me, we have a biblical literacy problem. Americans, including churchgoers, aren't reading much of any book, including the Good Book."

"Christians claim to believe the Bible is God's Word. We claim it's God's divinely inspired, inerrant message to us. Yet despite this, we aren't reading it. A recent Life Way Research study found only 45 percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week. Over 40 percent of the people attending read their Bible occasionally, maybe once or twice a month. Almost 1 in 5 churchgoers say they never read the Bible—essentially the same number who read it every day."

"Because we don't read God's Word, it follows that we don't know it." ...

I uncovered a number of articles that seem to be pointing to similar statistics along with some other rather disturbing trends. So when we begin to think about how hard it would be to deceive the elect, one has to wonder how many Christians are armed with a squirt gun heading into a spiritual gun fight and how many really know where they stand with the truth as God sees it? 

Research Releases in Faith & Christianity • June 15, 2016,
David Kinnaman, president of Barna and director of the research: 

“With each passing year, the percent of Americans who believe that the Bible is ‘just another book written by men’ increases. So too do the perceptions that the Bible is actually harmful and that people who live by its principles are religious extremists."

If you'd like to read it, you can find that article here: https://www.barna.com/research/the-bible-in-america-6-year-trends/

The Bible is such an awesomely tremendous and divine gift, yet it appears that a growing number of Jesus' own are neglecting its unequaled treasure of information. And if we as Jesus' own redeemed don't recognize and appreciate the great wealth and value of it, how could we ever think that we could convince nonbelievers to do so? In our own lives and walk with God, how can we gain any knowledge of His perspective - a perspective that's so critical to our own true spiritual well being and relationship with Him if we neglect what He's so graciously provided for that purpose? 

I know with overwhelming conviction that the life that we seek is found in those living pages and the understanding of it rendered by the Holy Spirit of The Living God. I've witnessed unbelievers pick excerpts out of context and try to rail against it based on their own lack of effort and understanding and they will likely continue to do what they will do. But I've also witnessed Christians do something similar. While they may not rail against the scriptures, I've heard them take a verse or passage out of context to promote a particular bent of their own which only encourages others to do the same and it reflects their lack of understanding that the Bible is one complete book. You cannot get the true spirit of it without the fullness of what's contained between the front and back covers - completely. It's one life giving story and no part is complete without fully digesting the rest. 

For some, I'm sure that the reading of it may seem an arduous and a potentially dry task. But from my own experience, I can tell you that I once felt the same way until the Holy Spirit began, at the time of His choosing, to make what I had read in the past come to life with living understanding in my present. What's truly dry (and sad in my thoughts) is a Christian that neglects feeding from it continually. The saying that "you are what you eat" is no more true than in a spiritual context. And with everything around us in the world that has to be sifted (if we're earnest in the care and guarding of our hearts), there's no more nourishing and contenting table than what our God has laid out before us in His Word. 

We may be faced one day, given the growing unjust attitude toward His Word, with the possibility of the scriptures being outlawed in this country. I'm not suggesting this as a joke. This already exists in some places in the world and the potential exists for that to become true here in the future. I've been watching the spirit of the world and our own country for a long while. And whether or not that ever proves to be true, the urgency of my heart is to persuade you to drink while you can and continually find life that you may not have even realized was there. Store it away and as you read, you'll gain more of the potentially life changing perspective that is the irrefutable truth that governs our lives today and our future divinely. We're without excuse before Him if we lack the diligence to use what He's graciously provided...

Isaiah 55:8-9 
8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD . “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.