I go to college at the University of North Alabama. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I have an intro to the New Testament class. During the lecture last week, my professor gave us a quote that has really stuck with me. “We don’t see things as they are; We see things as we are.”
I began thinking about how true this is. When I look at a situation, what do I see. We’ve all heard the expression about the glass either being “half empty” or “half full,” and which one you see reflects your personality and life experiences. You can take tests that will tell you whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. The world would say that you’re born that way, or your experiences made you that way. They’ll say you can’t change the way you view the world, but they’re wrong.
What if we became a people that begged God to allow us to see the world the way he sees it? What if we became a people that told God we were willing to change anything and give up everything in order to become more like Jesus? Jesus saw everyone as God’s children, not just the Christians. We should do the same. Matthew 25:40 says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!”
Ask God to give you opportunities, and ask him for the ability to recognize them when they come. Always act when the Holy Spirit asks you to. Don’t wait, no matter how far out of your comfort zone it is. God’s will is going to be accomplished, so if he chooses to lay it on your heart to do something, consider it a great honor. God doesn’t need us, but he wants us.
I am a 252 intern at Church of the Highlands, and our college ministry had its big outreach night this past Thursday. For an hour before everyone got there, the 252 interns blanketed the room we would have the service in in prayer. I pleaded with God to give me his eyes, give me opportunities, and give me boldness to act. The service went phenomenally, but God answered my plead after service.
I recognized a girl I had a class with last semester that was for pre-health majors, and when I saw her, she was in the middle of a conversation. God told me to go speak to her. He didn’t say why or what to even say to her, but I was going to do as he asked anyway. As I waited for her to finish her current conversation, Satan was fighting with me. He was filling my head with every excuse to just walk away. Instead of listening to him, I recognized that if he’s trying to stop me, God must be about to move.
When she had finished, I simply said “Hey, didn’t we have pre-health bio together last semester?” She responded with “yeah I think so.” I then proceeded to tell her how I was no longer pre-health, and how God had called me to change my major to professional writing so that I could write Christian works and speak for him. She immediately began filling with emotions. As it would turn out, God had also asked her to change her major and go into missions. She had been having some issues trusting God with her entire future, and she had been begging God to send her someone she could talk to that understood what she was going through. I was that person. What began as a simple conversation to me was an answered prayer to her.
You never know what a small act will mean or lead to. So, I beg you to step out in faith. You might just be the answer to someone’s prayers, and that’s the biggest blessing I’ve ever received from God.
“So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” 2 Corinthians 4:18.
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