From Gods Perspective
In this song, Bo sings in the perspective of God and explains to people how they can be better people. They should not just follow what a book says, but they should be moral people because they are moral people. This song also talks a lot about Religion.
From Gods Perspective
The fundamental difference between the person of faith and the unbeliever is revealed by the way they judge things. The unbeliever, of the world, judges things by worldly standards, by his senses, and by time. The person learning to think like God brings God into everything, viewing things from His perspective, by His values. He ascertains how the activity, event, or thing looks in terms of eternity. He seriously meditates on God's sovereignty over all things. At times, doing this puts the screws to his trust because the Bible says that God's judgments are "unsearchable . . . and his ways past finding out" (Romans 11:33). Faith holds a person steady.
Because we often do not think like Him, and because we do not have His perfect perspective, we often do not exactly know what God is doing. Only in hindsight do we understand what is occurring in our personal life, to the church, or in the world in the outworking of prophecy. So we must trust Him, and in the meantime weigh what is happening and its possible outcome.
Matthew 6:8This verse leads into the model prayer, indicating that we should not pray with the idea that we are bringing something new to God. It also introduces the thought that the purpose of prayer is not to overcome God's reluctance to answer and give but rather to lay hold of His willingness to help us toward His perspective, the fulfillment of His purpose and into His Kingdom. The overall emphasis in our requests, then, must be inclined toward His purpose and will.
John 9:1-5The first lesson to be learned from this miracle is that sinful man cannot frustrate God. Rather, God accomplishes His purposes sovereignly, saving by grace those whom He chooses to call to Himself. Even man's hatred cannot frustrate God, seen clearly in this miracle story. Jesus seems undisturbed by the religious leaders' attempt to stone Him, an action that would have created great turmoil in the Temple precincts. Yet, a moment later, after Jesus had removed Himself, we find Him stopping beside a blind beggar sitting near the Temple gate. In a similar situation, most of us would scarcely have seen the beggar, being more concerned with being pursued and distancing ourselves from the enemy. Not Jesus!
He had God's perspective and acted accordingly. Therefore, instead of complying with the prohibitions of sinful men, Christ simply perseveres in His task and begins to elect some to salvation. As Paul writes of God in Romans 9:15, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
The poor blind man symbolizes the state of the lost apart from the creative and transforming power of Christ. On the one hand, the rulers of the people, the Pharisees, can see physically but are spiritually blind. On the other, the blind man cannot see physically, but Christ makes him see both physically and spiritually. By the end of the story, we find him worshipping Jesus as the Son of God.
Martin G. CollinsThe Miracles of Jesus Christ: Healing a Man Born Blind (Part One)Related Topics: God's Perspective Jesus Christ's Healing of the Man Born Blind Miracles of Jesus Christ Seeing things from God's Perspective Spiritual Blindness
Now we must ask: What should a Father be like? We run into trouble here because all our examples of fathers are human, and every human father has been deficient in many ways. We are now dealing with a flawless Father, perfect in every way. He is eternal, perfect in wisdom, knows the end from the beginning, has unimaginable power, and does absolutely everything out of love. He does everything for the perfection and completion of His purpose, whether for us individually or for what He is working out universally.
O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
Jesus says in Matthew 6:8: "Therefore do not be like [the hypocrites]. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him." This verse leads into the model prayer, indicating that we should not pray with the idea that we are bringing something new to God. It also introduces the thought that the purpose of prayer is not to overcome God's reluctance to answer and give but rather to lay hold of His willingness to help us toward His perspective, the fulfillment of His purpose, and into His Kingdom. The overall emphasis in our requests, then, must be inclined toward His purpose and will.
The idea that the Spirit of God works through our circumstances and choices, through the things that happen to us, has given me a helpful perspective from which to view my own life and the lives of those I journey with.
As a relative newcomer to pastoral ministry (seven years), the theme of perspective continually emerges in my ministry. Allow me to reflect on some ways in which appreciating perspective has become relevant to me.
Thank you dear Tracy! I love this! Lord open my eyes in those areas that fear would like to grip my heart and hold me back from the victory that is already mine to claim!!! Woohoo! God, you are so good all the time!
Tracy became a Christian at the age of 16 and her life was changed forever. She went from being a depressed, suicidal, rebellious teenager to a dynamic leader for Christ. Immediately after accepting Jesus as her Savior, Tracy fought the school board in order to begin a Bible study on school grounds at her high school in Illinois. The dramatic transformation in Tracy's life has inspired many, including her own mother, to give their lives to Christ.
I have found from experience that there is something special about multilateral dialogue, one in which we are all minorities, for the simple reason that in so much of religious history the relation among religions has usually been defined in terms of differencesone"s identity being defined by that which is different from the other. This is so natural to our whole habit of thinking it is hard for us to conceive a way of defining our identity by that which makes us glad. Multilateral dialogue nurtures that vision: that in the eyes of God we are all minorities. In this plural and diverse situation and the increased consciousness of that being so, the attempt at a common denominator approach has proved increasingly hard to work. When it has succeeded, it has just created one new religionas if we needed another one. Nor is tolerance quite the solution. It usually has an elitist lining; either an elitist lining in the sense that you can be tolerant because for you it is not that important, or an elitist lining of noblesse obligeI know, but I cannot expect the other to know as much as I do.
These approaches do not work very well, once one wakes up to radical pluralism. Nor does the model in which one anticipates the victory of one over the many, work either. Many of you have heard me use as symbolic of this attitude the fact that ninety years ago in the United States, we got a journal called The Christian Century. It"s a very enlightened journal. It even switched from Gothic print to Latin letters in its masthead some twenty years ago. But it is sort of cute to think that at the beginning of this century Americans really believed that with American know-how and a little help from God we would end up by the year 2000 in a christianized world. What actually happened was an enormous renewal of the major religions of the world: great meetings, in Rangoon I think, in the 30s and 40s revivifying the Buddhist canon; the end of the classical form of Jewish assimilation after the Shoah and the establishment of the state of Israel; Hinduism in its various shapes and forms becoming a reality in practically all parts of the Western world. And the number of Muslims outnumbering the Jews in many parts of the West. That"s what happenedwhat happened was that Gandhi became the rejuvenator of the social consciousness of Martin Luther King. What happened was quite different from what was expected. So the only alternative is a plural alternative, and so I ask myself: how to sing my song to Jesus with abandon without telling negative stories about others! Or, if you want to sound more academic: "Towards a Christian theology of religions."
It strikes me very odd to take a passage from the most intimate and tender conversation with the most intimate and closest circle of disciples, from a context in which their hearts are full of foreboding with the imminent fear of relations about to be severed, to lift a word from that conversation, and use it in answering the question of Christianity"s relation to other religions. It is just not apropos. It is odd that one of the few passages that are used by those who have closed the doors on a theology of religions in Christianity, should be a passage which is dealing not with the question of the periphery or the margins or exclusion, but which, on the contrary, lies at the very heart of the mystery of what came to be the Trinity: the relation between the Father and the Son.
The images in the gospel of Matthew are minority images: "You are the salt of the earth." Nobody wants the world to be a salt mine. "You are the light of the world and let your light so shine before the people that they see your good deeds and become Christians." That"s not what it says.. It says: that they see your good deeds and praise your Father who is in Heaven, have some reason forjoy, that"s what it says. And think of the magithe Ayatullahs from Iran. They did not start the church when they got home. We might in retrospect think that was sad; anyway they didn"t, and it doesn"t seem to bother Matthew. Because for Matthew they got the experience of their life and they had touched the holiness of God"s kingdom. Matthew"s perspective is centered in what we refer to as the Kingdom. I"ll come back to that. 041b061a72