Today I prayed to see what God wants to teach me. I have really been pressing into the spiritual world and want to continue to press in and dive deeper into a relationship with myself, my spirit, and God.
God has been teaching me to look at the angles. I need to look at the things in my life that I don’t think are going well in a different way. I also need to look at the angle in which my life is pointed. But, what does it mean to look at life from all angles? Is it even possible? I know that I often look at life in a very one dimensional way. I have always looked at the things that go on in my life with regards to how they impact me. I dissect any events by the science that I know. By the facts about life that I have learned.
What does it mean to look at life from all of the angles? I think the biggest thing for me is to look at my struggles in this life in a different light. So often I look on my struggles with pity. Woe to me. My eyes are closed, scaled over as to what God is trying to reveal to me. They are closed because I am so focused on the struggle that I am completely missing the big picture. God is trying to teach me that it is through these struggles that I learn to rely on Him and not my own power. With being sick over the past couple of days with a bad headache and not having the mental capacity to think through what God was trying to teach me, I was bitter to the world. I was bitter to the ministry opportunities around me if they didn’t fit my wants and needs. God is showing me that I am a selfish person and that my selfish desires are greatly escalated when I am not feeling well.
The one dimensional thinking with me being sick was, I did nothing to deserve this and that I dislike so many of the things that are going on around me. Now when I look at it in multiple angles more things can be revealed to me. Through being sick God was teaching me that a life in Him doesn’t always mean that I will have the comforts I want or need. I may get sleep, I may not. I may be hot and I may be cold. But, all of these things are temporary. It is not about getting the rest in our fleshly bodies that is important. It is about getting the rest in Him that is truly important. That is one thing that being sick really allowed me to do. It allowed me to lay back and reflect on events that have happened to me in the past week. It gave me the opportunity to listen to a sermon. It gave me an opportunity to share with my team what God was teaching to me. With being sick, I thought that it was something miserable, but looking at it from a different angle, from a different light, it as a blessing in disguise.
No, this is not looking at things from all angles, but it is a process of starting to look at life events in more than one way. It is through processing different events in these ways that we can learn more about ourselves, our selfish, or selfless desires. God will reveal it all. We just need to listen.
Now listening can be one of the hardest things to grasp. For me, listening has never been easy. The reasoning is because I never gave myself time to listen. For most of my life if I was not doing something, then I was wasting my time. I was being non-productive. Now I have finally realized that that is not the case. Listening is one of the most important things we can do. By listening I mean listening through prayer. Prayer doesn’t have to be just talking to God, but it should also be listening to what he has to say. It is through listening that I have received small revelation that change who I am as a person.
Angles are not only the angle that we are looking upon things, but it can also be what our lives are pointing towards. Since all angles make a V that point at something, the angles within our lives can also be pointed at different things.
In woodworking the pieces need to be cut at the proper angle so that they fit into the precisely into the project. If one piece is not cut properly it will leave gaps and the structural integrity of the project will be compromised. It doesn’t matter if the whole project is perfect if there is one bad piece. The one bad piece will make the whole project worthless.
My live is no different. I am comprised of different thoughts, words, and actions. If any of these is not angled towards God, then my life is made imperfect. Luckily, I have started to be molded in a way that all of these aspects are angled towards God. If all of these things are angled towards God, then I will stay away from a destructive life where my words and actions break people down instead of build them up.
How is it that I can align these pieces to be pointed towards God? The answer is not by myself. I need help from God. Just like a woodworker placing each piece precisely and with a lot of thought, God is placing different things in my life to help build me into a Christ Centered man. I need to take advantage of these things. Whether it be studying the bible, discipling, evangelizing, or diving deep into prayer, all of these things will lead me in the right direction. It will turn my focus away from the sinful and destructive lifestyle I once lived and will point my focus onto something way better. It will put my focus on something perfect.
