The Way God Sees It

Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.

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Thanks for joining us. All right, guys, as Jason just

said, we're going to start a series of the book of James

today. This is going to be 10 weeks.

We're going to be in the book of James for 10 weeks.

Are we excited? I am, I'm excited for 10 weeks.

The reason I decided to do this is I was just praying about

where to go next to the church and just seeking God on this

like as the preacher, you know, so it's a lot of content and so

and just asking God like where to go and what I sense was I

preach a lot from the apostle Paul.

I just I find myself in Romans a lot.

I find myself in all of Pauline's Paul's letters because

I just relate so well to Paul and I just love the fact that

he's teaching such theology and doctrine, helping us understand

how the gospel works. And so I thought, hey, you know,

what if I camp out in the book of James for 10 weeks and

that'll force us to look at someone different.

And James is completely different from Paul.

James grew up, if you don't know this, he is the half brother of

Jesus. And actually Jesus would have

known him as Jacob. Jacob would have been his.

That would have been his name, James.

Jesus would have called him, and James grew up in the family with

Jesus. And what's interesting about

James is James was not a follower of Jesus when Jesus was

doing his ministry. James was actually resistant to

Jesus. He thought Jesus was crazy.

He's like, hey, we need to get Jesus home and get him back to

where he belongs. And James was didn't believe

this stuff. It was after the resurrection

that James decides that, oh, wait a minute, this is all real.

And so I want you to think for a second, if you have a sibling,

if you have a sibling, think about this.

What would it take for you to call your sibling God?

It'd be tough, right? For you.

So this is James, the brother of Jesus, and he calls his sibling

God. Like what would it take?

I'm telling you what it would. I have two brothers and I have

two sisters. I will tell you what it would

take for me to call either of my brothers God.

It would take me watching them down across, take their last

breath. It would take me watching them

being put in the grave with the stone roll in front of them.

And it would take me having breakfast with them a few days

later, right? It would it would take me

talking to them and going, oh, let me check your pulse.

So you're alive now. I might consider that you're

God, right. And so this so the fact that

James is a follower of Jesus, the fact that he's now a

believer and the fact that he's writing this, this letter to

other believers, it suggests that James, the brother of

Jesus, had an experience that pushed him over the line of

faith. All right, you follow me.

Now the letter of James is being written primarily to Messianic

Jews, people who were Jewish and who believed also that Jesus was

the Son of God, that he was the Messiah.

And so he's, he's addressing Jews who believed in Jesus.

Now in this letter, what you're going to realize as we walk

through this over the next few weeks is that these Jewish

Christians are facing persecution and challenging

circumstances primarily from Jews who didn't believe in

Jesus, right? They're being persecuted by Jews

who didn't believe in Jesus. And so and so this letter is a a

letter of encouragement. Now, whereas Paul is, when you

read Paul, he is bringing out theology and doctrine and

explaining things from the Hebrew Scriptures and helping us

see how it all fits together. And he's basically screaming

that the gospel is the good news, that we can be right with

God, no effort of our own, but through faith.

James, on the other hand, is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's we believe that that's good stuff.

But now once you believe, here's some practical ways to live once

you claim to be a Jesus follower.

And that's what we're going to be unpacking.

And so today we're going to start with James chapter 1,

James 1:2–8

verses 2 through 8. So if you have your Bibles,

that's where we're going to jump in and read.

And today we're talking about the idea of wisdom in trials,

wisdom in trials. So we all live through trials.

We all go through tough times. We all go through hard times,

but we don't always have wisdom. We have a belief in our culture

that just because you get older, you're automatically going to

get smarter. But is that necessarily true?

It's not necessarily true. Just because you get older

doesn't mean you will get smarter.

Getting older, growing older you the only way you grow wiser when

you grow older is based on how you respond to the circumstances

you live through, how you react to the circumstances you live

through. All righty.

So we're going to jump into this text.

So James chapter 1 going to read verses 2 through 8.

James 1 · chapter mention

If you want to read the whole letter today and encourage you

to do that as we jump into the series.

But today we're going to look at verses 2 through 8.

Here we go. Consider it pure joy, my

brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,

because you know that the testing of your faith produces

perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work

so that you may be mature and complete comma not lacking

anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you

should ask God, who gives generously to all without

finding fault and it will be given to you.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because

the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blonde and

tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to

receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is a double minded

is double minded and unstable and all they do all righty.

So here we are. We're talking about wisdom, all

right. Wisdom in the midst of trials.

The fact of the matter is, and Mallory alluded to this in her

communion thought, is that all of us tend to go through

difficult seasons of life. And I think as I've gotten

older, I feel like the the seasons of difficulty are longer

and more regular and the seasons of not difficulty are shorter

and fewer between. Does anybody else kind of feel

that way sometimes? Like there just seems to be like

lots of as you get older, there's lots of difficulty.

We all go through seasons of difficulty and seasons of

trials, seasons of struggles, and the tendency is to think,

well, if I'm going through something hard, then God must be

absent. Our hearts are programmed to

think like religious people. If I do good, good things will

happen to me. If I do bad, bad things will

happen to me. If something bad is happening to

me, then I must have done something bad.

And this this is kind of how our hearts are programmed to think.

And I will say that that that the enemy, the the Satan uses

that lie to manipulate us and to turn our hearts away from God

and to mistrust God. But this is not what the

Scripture teaches. The Scripture actually teach

that trials and difficult circumstances are a part of

life. I like to tell people that in

this world, Jesus said in this world you have trouble.

And so in the world, people struggle and they have difficult

time and they have difficult circumstances.

And you live in this world. Therefore in this world you will

have trouble and difficult times and difficult circumstances.

It's just the way it is. Well, the good news is, is that

what James says is that when we face trials, when we face

difficult seasons, James tells us to consider it pure joy to

count it as joyful. Now is he mean like whenever you

face something hard to go, man, I'm so happy this is exciting.

I'm going through something hard.

No, it's joy is not happiness. Joy is a deep seated sense that

things have a purpose, that things have meaning, that that

life is not just random, that God is in the middle of every

single thing I'm going through. And this brings us joy.

So I can walk through something very difficult and I can have a

deep seated sense of joy because I know that God is present in

the middle of that with me. And what James goes on to

explain is that you can have joy because God is using your

difficult circumstance. He's using your trial.

He's using your challenge to mature you, to grow you, to

shape you, to change you. Recently, I was talking to a

friend about me helping someone else with their challenge,

helping someone else with their difficulty, and I was in the

middle of this, you know, counseling this person and

helping them. I said, you know what's ironic?

Because I can see how God is forming them and shaping them

through this challenge, but also just being in proximity to their

challenge, just being close to them and helping them.

God is also forming me and shaping me.

So it's not just our difficult circumstances.

It's when we're in the middle of difficult circumstances with

people we love. What James says is that the

testing of our faith and do not get it sideways.

When you go through, when you go through difficult circumstances,

it will often feel like a test. I mean, have you ever found

yourself in difficult circumstances where things are

going hard and you wondered, is God even real?

You command is this, is this, is this stuff even true?

Is God even real? Does this, is this really true?

That is how we know that these things are a test of our faith.

And what James says is that these these trials, these

difficult circumstances, they're testing our faith so that they

produce perseverance. In other words, they produce

sticking power. And James says, if you have

sticking power, then what's going to happen is you're going

to be mature and you're going to become complete, not lacking

anything. And this idea of complete, you

know, this is an interesting term in the original language.

It means to be sound or whole or integrated.

Many of us as believers of Jesus, if you're a follower of

Jesus, maybe this is you've noticed this about your life as

well. Many of us as followers of

Jesus, our lives can be disintegrated.

They can be, they can be fragmented, right?

In other words, we can kind of like love Jesus and love to come

to church and then on Thursday wonder if it's all true, you

know, or we can struggle with some terrible sins, some

terrible temptation that keeps coming up over and over again.

And yet on Sunday we can say, I'm going to overcome this.

The Lord, you're going to get me through this.

Is any, does anybody else relate with this or is this just me?

Right. So we can be fractured people

and, and, and this is part of the human condition.

The natural condition of the of the human being is we tend to be

fractured people. And what this word complete

means is, is James says that the the testing of your faith, the

going through difficult circumstances.

It has the potential potential being the keyword.

It has the potential to make you complete, to integrate you.

This is why if you've ever met older people who have been

following Jesus a long time and who have been leaning into Jesus

and trusting him for a very long time, they're well and up in

years. You will when you're around

them, you sense that they are genuinely integrated, meaning

they are the same person no matter who they're around.

They are comfortable in their own skin.

They they, they are honest about who they are and they're

comfortable with being honest about who they are.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

The reason that those older people have gotten there is

because they've gone through some trials.

It isn't because life's been easy.

It isn't because life's been a walk in the park.

It's actually the opposite. It's because life's been hard

and difficult and challenging. And in the middle of that, God

has been using those challenges to make them an integrated

person. So James says you can count your

trials as pure joy because of what they are producing in you.

Their your trials lead you to victory over fragmentation and

some of what listen some of what fragmentation is is sin acts the

action of sin. So when the Bible talks about

sin, it talks about sin, meaning our guilt, our sin guilt and the

cross has removed that guilt from us through the blood of

Christ. Praise be to God.

But the Bible also talks about the fact that we still have sin

acts. We still do things ACTS.

We still do things that are outside of the will of God.

Am I the only one? Is it just me?

No. And some of you are like, should

I confess to that? Yeah.

It's good for the soul. The Bible teaches that it's good

for the soul. Yes.

I still, I still have sin acts in my life.

What James is saying is that the the process of becoming complete

and being integrated through your trials and through your

difficult circumstances actually leads us to overcome acts of sin

in our lives. So that as we grow older in the

faith, we do indeed have less sin acts in our lives.

Not because we're trying hard, not because we're determined,

not because we feel guilty or tons of shame, but because God

is working that out in our lives through our difficult

circumstances, through our challenging seasons.

Now, all this good news about your trials and all this good

news about your difficult circumstances that they will

lead you to more integration. They will lead you to maturity

and completeness versus 4 and 5 going out of versus four and

five. They tell us that it's not

automatic. In other words, it's not

guaranteed. It's not an automatic thing that

just because you go through something difficult that you're

going to come out the other side more integrated and more mature

and more complete. It's not guaranteed.

It's not an automatic thing. This is this is what versus four

and five seem to suggest. In other words, the productivity

of your trials, whether they are productive or not, depends on

your response to the confusion and the pain they bring in your

life. See what I'm saying?

It's how you respond that determines whether those trials

will produce completeness and integration.

In other words, your trials don't automatically grow your

faith. How you respond to your trials

determines the growth of your faith.

So let's look at verses four and five again.

It says, let perseverance finish its course so that you may be

mature and complete, lacking anything.

And then it says, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask

God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it

will be given to you. Now, the request for wisdom in

verse 5 is a request based on the trial you're walking

through. Here's the assumption that James

is making. The James is making assumption

that life, which can be difficult at times and

challenging at times, will leave us feeling confused.

Anybody say, yeah, that's true. That's true.

It leaves us feeling confused, Confused about ourselves,

confused about God, confused about the person that we're in

conflict with, just confused. Why can't life just be easier?

Why can't things just slow down and trials and difficulties

leave us be Feeling confused. And what James is saying is that

in the midst of that confusion, the solution is found in the

wisdom that God offers you. So in the context of trials, we

feel confused. We need God's wisdom.

But also James is assuming this, that you don't know at all that

you don't have complete and total exhaustive knowledge when

he says if any of you lacks wisdom, that's a tongue in

cheek. That's that's sarcasm.

That's like saying if you don't have full and total knowledge

about a thing. So James is using sarcasm to

say, if any of you lacks wisdom, This is a question.

Hey, do you lack wisdom? So if you're going through

something tough, you're going through something challenging.

And and I said to you, are you confused?

And you said, yeah. And I said, well, do you

understand everything about the situation?

You would say, obviously not. This is the context in which

James is now saying, hey, if you lack wisdom, ask God.

So we all lack wisdom in general in life.

We all lack complete and exhaustive knowledge about

everything, but especially when we're going through a

challenging circumstance, we lack wisdom.

Now I need to pause and just kind of say, well, what is

wisdom? Because I'm just going to tell

you what I think. And there was a whole part of

the sermon I cut out just for time's sake, going into Proverbs

to talk about wisdom. So I'm just going to tell you

what I think. In Proverbs chapter 1, wisdom is

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

personified as a woman calling in the streets.

And she says, hey, if you would listen to me, I would tell you

my ways. I would tell you my

instructions. And when I tell people

biblically what wisdom is, biblically wisdom is God's

perspective. So if you take notes, write,

take that, write that down. Wisdom is God's perspective.

It's the way God sees things. It's what God would do, how God

would act, how God would, what God would say.

It's in other words, wisdom is the the view that God has on the

situation. That's what wisdom is.

And so that's the working definition of wisdom, God's

perspective. So whenever we read James 15, if

any of you likes wisdom, you could say it this way.

If any of you lacks God's perspective, if any of you don't

have a God's viewpoint of a thing, let him ask God.

All right now. So wisdom is God's perspective.

God offers us his wisdom in the midst of our confusion, and we

all need it. We're following this argument so

far. Now here's the next idea of this

text. The next idea of this text is

this, that God is not stingy with his perspective or his

wisdom. God is not stingy with his

perspective or his wisdom. God is generous with his

perspective. Now notice verse 5.

It says, and he is, He gives it generously.

He gives it generously. Now I love this that that, that

this is a descriptor of how God is giving us something, that he

just pours it out to us. And this is beautiful.

He gives it to all without finding fault.

I love that part of the path, that verse 5 as well.

He gives it to all, to all. What does to all mean to all?

Everybody means everybody, right?

I tell my atheist friends, I'll, I have friends who don't believe

in God, who don't believe in this whole Jesus stuff.

I'll read this passage of Scripture to them and I'll say,

hey, verse 5 says that you do not even have to believe in God

to pray this prayer, that you can stare at the wall and sit on

your bed and say, God, if you're real, if this is genuine, I

would like to have your perspective.

I would like to have you your viewpoint of this.

And what the Scripture says is that God gives it generously to

all without finding fault. Now, without, what does that

mean without finding fault? Well, have you ever had anybody

ask you for help with something and you gave them as some advice

and they didn't take it and they made a mess of things and then

later they came back and asked you for advice again, anyone

talking about and you thought to yourself, I just don't think I'm

going to waste my breath. Anybody.

Has anybody ever felt this way? I'm going to tell you as a

pastor, I have felt this way most of the time, little

confession moment. I can count on one hand the

amount of people that I've said, Hey, this is what I think God is

telling you you should do. This is what I think you should

do. Like this is the advice I would

give you. And I can count on one hand the

amount of people that said, yeah, I'm going to do that.

And they went and did it. And the stores have been amazing

because I don't, I just don't randomly give it.

But I'm just not like, I think you should do this.

And you know, like this would. I mean, anyway, I don't want to

go down that road because it was just the whole turns of the

whole thing of me complaining and everybody doesn't need that.

But there is a sense sometimes where you got you kind of go,

man, we've, we've had so many conversations, we've had so many

meetings. I just don't think I can drink

coffee with you anymore because you don't do anything I say and

you stay in this mess. You're just, it's not worth it.

And I have been known to like, say I'm done, like I love you,

but I'm done. You know what this text says is

that God never does that with us.

He gives to all without finding fault that without finding fault

part. That's the part where he goes,

listen, Steven, you've never listened to me before, but I'll

tell you again for the 7th thousandth time, OK?

He he continues to give is is there a reason for him to find

fault? Certainly there is, but he does.

He doesn't say, well, you're not good enough, you're not holy

enough. You don't go to church enough.

He says no, I don't find fault. You see, here's the deal.

God knows that his perspective is the universally correct

perspective of the universe. In other words, he knows he has

objective knowledge of how life works on this planet, that he

knows more than you do. He knows that and he offers this

to you because he is the designer and originator of this

whole thing. And he knows that you have

limited scope that you can only see so far.

And so basically God realizes that you and I need his help.

God realizes that you and me need his help with this thing

called life. I think about this, I have had

two Chevrolet Suburbans, two 2003 models, and I still have a

2003 model. I know a 2003 that's 23 year old

vehicle and it's got 280,000 miles on it.

That's nothing people. We're we're going to a half

million in that truck. We're going to make it.

That's 280 baby. She broke and she just get she

just get going and I have had to do some work.

I've got to do some work on it. Now I've had to work on that

truck through the years and then the one before I had to work on

it a few times. My son will be 16 in November

and what I would like to buy him if I could is a similar year

model Chevrolet truck with a 5 three in it.

Do you know why? Because I know that truck and

that engine back and forward. I will know if it makes the

slightest. No, I know what that is because

I have been around them now for a decade and a half.

But let's imagine he does get a 2002, 2003 model Chevrolet 1500

with A53 in it and it has a problem, let's say not to get in

two of the weeds too much, but let's say it's in limp mode.

It won't go over 30 mph. I know exactly what that is.

I've cleaned a throttle body many a times on the side of the

road with paper towels and rubbing alcohol.

All right, I know exactly what that is.

But let's say that he calls me and he says, Dad, my truck is in

lint mode. It won't go over 30 mph.

What do you think it is? And in my head, I know exactly

what it is. Been there a million times.

Those things are those those throttle bodies are known to

carbon up and not run. The computer limits it to 30

mph. But I say to him instead, I

don't know, buddy, I'm not telling you, but Dad, I'm over

here on, you know, wherever in town, it's not, as you know,

it's late. I'm it's dangerous.

So good luck. You know what I mean?

You shouldn't drive all junk. You know, I wouldn't do that,

would I? I would say, here's the

information. Here's the, here's the knowledge

that I have. I want to share this with you

because I love you and because you're in a situation that you

need my perspective, you need my wisdom.

And so this is who our God is. He loves us.

He has the perspective we need and he offers it to you all,

even if you're not a good Christian, whatever that is,

even if you don't go to church that much, even if you're not

sure what you believe about all this, He offers it to you all

without finding fall. Now, we could end this sermon

here and I could say now go put this in practice.

But I need to say to you very quickly, we do not tend to trust

God's perspective. So even though he is very

generous with it and he's not stingy with it, we do not tend

to trust God's perspective. Look at verse 6.

It says, but when you ask, you see that.

But when you ask, why is James even continuing to write?

Because he knows that we tend to not trust God's perspective.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because

the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed

by the wind. So first of all, we need to talk

about this at first reading. What most people think this

verse means is that I'll leave this verse up.

It says what most people think this verse means.

Is that OK? When I ask God for his

perspective, I better not doubt he's going to give it to me.

I better not doubt it because OK God, I really believe you're

going to give it to me. I really, I don't doubt you're

going to give it to me. OK?

This is how we tend to read this verse.

That is an incorrect reading of this verse.

Do you know why? Because verse five said he gives

to all without finding fault. Does does that include people

who are doubting he'll give it to them?

Yes. So verse 5 is saying that even

if you doubt, you're going to receive it, OK.

Even if you doubt, even if you're like, I don't even think

I'm going to get anything, but I'll pray and ask you for it.

He gives it to you. So verse 6 cannot mean you got

to really believe he's going to give it to you.

This is kind of how this was taught to me.

And you can you can understand how that puts a lot of pressure

and honest on you as the person who's praying like, am I

believing enough? Do I have enough faith?

I mean, what a terrible burden that is, right?

This is not what I hope this sets you free.

If you think this way. This is not what this passage is

saying here in verse 6. What this what James is saying

in verse 6 is. But when you ask and you're

going to receive, don't doubt what you receive.

Don't doubt the wisdom you get. Don't doubt the perspective that

God gives you. Don't file 13 it.

Don't don't don't take what God gives you and says and say,

well, you know, that seems like a one of the ideas.

This is what James is saying. You're going to receive God's

perspective. Don't doubt it when you receive

it. Don't doubt his way of doing

things. You see, what James knows is our

tendency is to want to do things our own way.

This is why we can ask 20 people for advice and not take any of

their advice and still do it the way we were always intending to

do it in the in the 1st place. I see some grimaces across the

room. People like this right here.

It has been me like, why were we asking for advice in the 1st

place? We don't even know to see if

anybody maybe was smarter than us.

And what we find out is by the 12th or 13th person, it's like

nobody's smarter than me. I know what I'm doing.

We tend to treat God as one of our friends.

We go, let me get, give me, give me some advice God.

And just like we kind of pass on our friends advice, we pass on

God's advice. And this is what James knows

that we're prone to do. The reason you are prone to

mistrust God's perspective is because it never, ever will

sound natural or normal. Jesus said love your enemies and

do good to those who persecute you.

In what world would that make sense?

God's perspective, His viewpoint, will always go

against the natural inclinations of our flesh.

Always will always go against the wisdom of this world.

It will always be like something.

It will all hearing God's perspective and hearing his

viewpoint will always feel like I'm going to look like a fool if

I do that. People will think I'm crazy if I

do that, which is why we discount it is why we take it

off the table and we say, do you have anything else?

God? Listen to what Isaiah says,

Isaiah 55 verses 8:00 and 9:00. It says for my thoughts are not

your thoughts, neither are my your ways.

My ways declares the Lord as the heavens are higher than the

earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts

than your thoughts. Now think about this for a

second. Those ways that are so much

higher than ours. Those thoughts that are so much

higher than ours. James One says he offers them to

us. Do you think they're going to be

not exactly aligned with how the world thinks and how you would

tend to think in your flesh? Of course.

You see, it makes sense that we are prone to mistrust God's

advice because it often times doesn't make sense.

Everything about our world's value system will pull you away

from the direction that God would have you move and God

would have you proceed. Sometimes, sometimes very few

people, only the most godly, biblically grounded and devoted

believers will affirm what you think is God's perspective.

You're nominal Christians, people who are kind of on the

fence around Christianity. You're non believing friends.

They will think you're crazy. Even your believing friends who

treat Jesus as one of the boxes of their lives will think you're

crazy. If you go all in on following

God's advice, you will find yourself alone with very few

allies, only the most grounded, only the most deeply trusting.

Christ's followers around you will say yes, I know this feels

crazy, but I affirm with you as well that this is what God is

leading you to do. So we all, myself included, make

the choice often to doubt God's perspective.

Because in those moments, my pride takes over and I decide to

live my life as if God does not exist.

Now, if you ask me, Stephen, do you believe God exists?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe God's real.

But I'm choosing to live these choices as if he's not real.

Now, James is going to say in verse 6 that when you and I

trust, I mean you and I doubt God's perspective, bad things

happen. Look at verse 6 again.

He says, But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt.

And remember, that's not doubting the perspective that

you're going to get. Don't doubt his advice because

the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed

by the wind. Friend, when you go to God and

you say God, I need some advice. I need your perspective and he

offers it to you and you file 13 it.

What James is simply saying is when you don't do things God's

ways, your life becomes a mess. Do you need a whole sermon on

that or can just like looking around prove that to you?

Maybe your own past experience will be like, yeah, let me tell

some stories. So #1 when you when, when you

doubt God's perspective, bad things happen.

But when you align your life with God's perspective, this is

the language when you align your life with God's perspective,

When you align your life with God's viewpoint, when you say,

OK, I don't really understand how this is going to work.

This feels confusing and it doesn't match up with world's

values, but I'm going to align my life with God's perspective.

When you align your life, God's perspective, the opposite

happens. Listen to verse 8.

It says such a person, a person who doubts is double minded and

unstable in all they do. All right, So what James is

saying is if I doubt God's perspective, I am double minded

and unstable in all that I do. I love to do this when I'm

reading the Bible, I like to flip a verse over.

I like to look at it in the inverse.

So what I mean is this, if a if a person who doubts God's

perspective is double minded and unstable in all they do, then a

person who trusts God's perspective and aligns their

life with God's perspective is what single minded and what

stable in all they do. You see how we just flip that.

And so if you trust God's perspective, if you trust God's

ways of doing thing, then you have direction, you have

purpose. Listen, listen.

You also are easier to be around.

I like the I like the giggles and the throat clearing in the

room. Like, yeah, that's true, bro.

It's true about you, OK? It's true about me.

I'm the I'm the hardest person to live with when I'm misaligned

with God's perspective, in God's viewpoint I am and the easiest

person to live with when I am aligning my life with God's

viewpoint gospel. When I'm seeking it, I'm

aligning it to it. Now I know it's easy to hear a

sermon like this and say, OK, he's right.

I need to ask God for his perspective.

I need to get in the habit of doing this.

And you won't do that until you find yourself in some big

crisis. Some big thing happens,

Financial crisis, health crisis. Oh God, give me your viewpoint.

Give me your perspective. The problem is, is you haven't

trained your heart and your head to align with his viewpoint and

perspective in that moment. So you most likely won't.

You'll just stay in the confusion.

It'll just be bad. You'll be unstable and double

minded. You'll be tossed by the sea.

I've lived this, so I can just tell you this is true.

But if you'll take my advice and you'll begin to pray daily for

God's perspective on some small things that you're walking

through, like how to love and lead your teenagers, how to love

and care for your spouse. So like this, we give you a way

how it can sound. Dear God, let me see Ava the way

you see her. It's one of my children.

Let me love her the way you love her.

Let me speak to her the way you would speak to her.

Let me challenge her the way you would challenge her.

Let me serve her the way you would serve.

Give me your divine perspective of Ava today.

Amen. Or dear God, Bill at the office.

I want to choke him. Be honest in your prayers.

The Lord knows thy heart. Forgive me from wanting to choke

him first of all, but give me your divine perspective of Bill.

Let me see him the way you see him.

Let me love him the way you love him.

Let me speak to him the way you would speak to him if you were

in my shoes. In this office.

You see, in the daily habit of doing it, you will begin to

train your heart and your mind to listen for God's perspective.

And slowly over time, you will train your heart and mind to

align with God's perspective. And so that when the crisis

comes, and certainly my friend, it will come, you will have the

habit of a heart that trusts God's perspective.

So here's my challenge for you. Choose someone, pray daily for

God's perspective of them for two weeks to get in the habit.

It could be your spouse, it could be one of your children,

it could be all of your children.

It could be yourself. Some of the greatest answers to

this prayer in my life have been dear God, let me see me the way

you see me. Let me understand me the way you

understand me. Let me speak to myself the way

you speak to me. I lack wisdom, friend about me.

I'm not nearly as self aware as I think I am.

Neither are you, but choose somebody.

Choose someone. And for two weeks, dear God, let

me see, let me have your perspective, this person from

your perspective. And then after two weeks, and

some of you will do this and some of you won't, I hope you

all will. After two weeks, I want you to

just come up and grab me on a Sunday in the lobby or send me

an e-mail. Tell me what's been happening.

I just recently gave this advice to my brother Brian.

If you're watching, I love you. My younger brother called me

some challenges with some stuff he's facing.

I don't want to put his stuff in the street.

And I said, hey, man, try this. Pray for God's perspective of

this person. And about about a week ago, I

gave him that advice. He called me yesterday, the day

before yesterday, Friday to tell me, man, I just he goes, I think

we should start a podcast. I said, what do you mean?

Because I think we should start a podcast where you just give me

biblical advice to the problems I have and we just video it and

record it and we just put it out there for people to listen

because this is like radically changed.

This has radically changed the circumstance for me.

So I'd love to hear your story. Try it for two weeks and come

and tell me. I'd love to hear that.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe so you

hear a new episode every week. You can also worship with us in

person in Savannah, GA or watch our live stream on Facebook and

YouTube every Sunday at 9:15. Have a great week.