Five life-controlling perspectives

The five life-controlling perspectives below are far too common. Each one summarizes a way of seeing things or an outlook on life.

Life-controlling outlooks usually have a history. They’re shaped by parental examples and the circumstances of life. Temperament and personality also play a role — as does our fallen and sinful nature.

Five life-controlling perspectives:

1. Discouragement – Maybe you’re discouraged and discouragement has become your primary lens for life. Hardships and trials can have a way of shaping our outlook or disposition toward life. Discouragement, at a deeper level, is a loss of perspective.
2. Negativity – Do you expect the worse to happen? Do you tend to always see the dark side of things? Perhaps you’ve allowed the setbacks and disappointments of life to make you negative, cynical and sarcastic. You’re looking through a lens of pessimism while you tell yourself that you’re “just being realistic.”
3. Anger – Perhaps resentment and anger are your primary lens for life. You maintain a slow burn under an outwardly pleasant veneer that can erupt into anger at any time and rule your life. Is anger an occasional disruption for you or the way you process most of life?
4. Complacency – Have you become complacent? Perhaps you’ve stop caring because you feel that caring doesn’t help and often hurts too much. Maybe you’ve drifted from God and you no longer take spiritual matters seriously.
5. Self-absorbed – Are you all about you? Is life about how you feel, about your comfort zone, what you want —  you, you, you? Does it always have to be your way and about you?

Perspective is a key word when it comes to the quality of life. It’s also something important to God’s will for our lives. One of the primary practical functions of Scripture is the way it shapes our perspective.

The Bible offers the panoramic view of life from creation to eternity. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What went wrong with God’s good world? Where are we going? Is there hope for the future?

Each time we enter Scripture, we should see it as a perspective session with God. It requires us to ask how we’re seeing things and what we are leaving out in our perspective.

The five perspectives above leave out important truths about God and his will for our lives. They violate the Creator-creature order, deny the great truth of God’s love for us in Christ and leave out God’s hopeful future promised to His sons and daughters.

Scripture confronts us with

• Vertical truths for the horizontal circumstances of life
• Eternal truths for the temporal realities of life
• God-centered truths for the self-centered default of life.

Scripture is compared with a lethal weapon capable of piercing deep into our lives

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).

II Timothy 3:16-17 – “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to

• teach us what is true and
• to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.
• It corrects us when we are wrong and
• teaches us to do what is right.

God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (NLT)

Challenge:

Loss of perspective must be challenged through daily perspective forming sessions with God.   

* Audio message on this theme here.

Steve Cornell