When you think about approaching the throne of God, where do you look to see Jesus? Take a moment to picture this heavenly encounter. When I thought about this in prayer this morning, I realized that I have always pictured Jesus to the right of God, to my right. And that’s when I realized my wrongful perspective. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God (Apostles Creed, 1 Peter 3: 22)—which means that when I approach the throne, I must look to the left of God, which is God’s right hand side. That is where where Jesus is seated in majesty!
All these years I have had the wrong perspective—my perspective, not God’s! How emblematic of my life is this?! Always looking at situations, opportunities, challenges, and trials from my perspective, instead of God’s. No wonder I question God about some biblical truths that seem wrong or unfair. Why innocent people suffer, why saints are persecuted, why corrupt people prosper? Why the first shall be last? Why do so many of God’s ways seem backward to us?
Think about a keyboard. If you know how to type without looking at the keys, typing words and sentences becomes an unconscious act connecting your brain (your thinking or reading) with your fingers. If the letters on the keys were reversed, like a mirror image, would typing be such an easy, unconscious act? No! You would have to stop and look at each key as you typed. Given enough time and practice, you could probably become adept at typing with this reversed keyboard, once this new perspective became engrained in your mind and embodied in your fingers.
This exemplifies how we as Christians must become accustomed to looking at our world and our life from the perspective of God. To have the mind of Christ (see Philippians 2: 4), we must deliberately alter our perspective from that which we learned from the world, and which is constantly reinforced through the media, advertising, marketplace, and people.
Many people who claim to be Christians have a mixed up perspective of the world. Back to the keyboard analogy, many Christians have seen the reversed keyboard, but their fingers are still typing based on the keyboard they learned earlier in life. They have not relearned the new keys and so the messages they type out are gobbledygook, which is a very appropriate word, because it pretty much looks and sounds like what it means—a garbled, messed up message. Learning to see your life and the world through Jesus’s eyes, from God’s perspective, requires a mindful effort and regular practice that comes through prayer, reflection, scripture reading and memorization, and fellowship with Christians who have attained the mind of Christ.
In His love,
Doug