Live on Purpose

As I watched the LSU/ALABAMA game unfold last night, I couldn’t help but be sad.  I was sad because LSU lost, of course, but I also began to think about the opportunity to play and win a National Championship that had come and gone (at least until next year! GEAUX TIGERS).  I began to think about the seniors who would never have that chance again.  They had played their last down of football.  I can’t even imagine the feelings that were charging through their heart and minds during that time.  For many of them, last night must have been a difficult night.  This morning, I woke up and saw the picture below of the Birmingham News and the New Orleans Advocate and it got me thinking about how we view things is everything! When we go through difficult circumstances, we must remember that PERSPECTIVE is everything.  Have you ever heard someone say, “it’s all in how you look at it”?  This is perspective.  How do you choose to look at the circumstances of your life?  Many times, like the photo, we look at situations AS WE GO THROUGH them and that causes us to see things in an immediate, sometimes helpless fashion.  I bet though, there are situations that you can look back on in your life, that once you had gone through them, you look at differently now than you did then.  Am I right?  I encourage you to keep the situations of your life in perspective.  You may be going through things right now that you absolutely don’t understand but, hold on my friend, because one day it will all make sense!  1 Corinthians 13:12 tells us  Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.  I know what you are thinking, though…”that doesn’t help right now!”  You are right.  The truth is there are things in our lives that don’t makes sense and that we don’t know what to do with, but we have to remember that word…perspective.

Soul Surfer is the movie about the life of Pro Surfer Bethany Hamilton.  It is an incredible journey of faith as Bethany, a Christ-follower, has her arm bitten off at the shoulder by a shark.  During the movie she struggles with why this happened to her.  She went to visit her youth minister who encouraged her to seek God’s perspective, even though she didn’t understand it and she knew it would be more difficult to see then anything ever in her life.  

During the course of time, Bethany finds herself on a mission trip to Thailand after the horrible tsunami that destroyed much of that land.  She is ministering to people down by the ocean when she notices that no one is in the water.  She finds a surf board laying around and goes out into the ocean and begins to teach a young boy to surf and to show him that he had nothing to fear.  Her voice then comes over and she says something about God’s perspective… “I had to come all the way to Thailand to teach someone how to surf to realize that surfing is not the most important thing!”  She now is a full time surfer who is making a difference for Christ because of the amazing perspective that He gave her as she put someone else’s needs ahead of her own.

Romans 8:28 tells us that “all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose!”  So often we confuse the language of that verse to read that all things will be good.  The scripture is clear that all things that happen to us may not be good but they will work out for our good in time as we love God and are faithful to His purpose for our lives.  

I don’t know what is going on in your world today.  I do know what is going on in mine, though.  I can imagine that most of us are facing tough decisions or circumstances that we aren’t sure about.  I pray that this helps you back up and look at your particular situation from the perspective of God and His Word!  

Ephesians 3:20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 

Peace to You,

Kevin