Perspective Matters - Pastor Chuck Russ - October 04, 2026

Every Sunday at Northwest Church of the Nazarene in Columbus, Ohio, a congregation is challenged to grow spiritually.

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Did you hear this story about George and Frida?

George woke up, he could hear the monitors of the heart monitor and the oxygen level, and the and the room was a blur, and there were bright lights above his head, and uh he was very confused and disoriented.

And as things began to unfold, he looked at above his bed and and there was his beautiful wife Frida.

And she he said, Frida, you're here.

What happened?

And Frida said, Yes, George, I'm here.

You've had a heart attack, George, but everything's gonna be okay.

The doctor says that you're gonna recover just fine.

And George thought for a few moments and he said, Frida, do you remember when we were on our first date and we had a car accident and and I wound up in the hospital for three weeks?

She said, Oh yes, George, I remember.

I remember that day.

That was that was difficult.

He said, You were there.

She said, George, I was there.

And he thought for another moment and he said, Frida, do you remember when we got married and we bought our first home and the house burned to the ground and I was in the hospital with burns all over my body, and it took so long to recover.

She said, Oh, George, I remember that.

He said, Frida, you were there.

She said, George, you're right, I was there.

And then he thought to himself, Frida, you're just bad luck.

I really think that perspective matters, don't you?

Um today we're going to study from the book of Isaiah, chapter 43.

Isaiah 43 · chapter mention

Uh, and I just want to hone in on one single verse, and I'll let you take the chapter home with you and read the rest of it.

Beautiful, beautiful verse.

But here is one of the highlights of that chapter, Isaiah 43, 19.

See, I am doing a new thing.

Now it springs up.

Do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

I'm not going to have a lot of uh screen slides this morning, but if you're taking notes, could you just write these two words or sentences at the top of your page?

Number one, write down these words.

Perspective matters.

Perspective matters.

And number two, could you write down just this one little phrase?

We tend to go in the direction that we are looking.

Many, many years ago, Linda and I started a company, a couple of them, and one of the areas that we've dealt with was landscaping and lawn mowing.

And it was a busy time.

We worked hard and we brought on new employees.

And one of the things that we had to teach them was how to leave a lawn looking immaculate when they left.

And I noticed, and I believe other people notice, if the lines are not straight, we notice.

And so we spent hours teaching our employees how to make a straight line.

And oftentimes they would spend their time looking down like this, and if they finished the long row, you could see how they zigzagged through the whole lawn.

Some of the lawns were several acres, and by the time they would reach the end, it looked like a sloppy mess.

So finally we would have to tell them if you're going to make a straight line, pick a target and then drive your machine towards that target.

And they would try that, and sure enough, their lines would be straight as an arrow because we came to understand over time that we go in the direction that we are looking.

If we're looking down like this at our feet, who knows where we might wind up?

But if we keep our shoulders back and our heads high and we look at the horizon, we'll head in the direction as long as we keep our eyes on the prize, on the goal.

You may not believe this, but my wife was the first one in our family to buy a motorcycle.

And she woke up one day and she said, I'm gonna buy a motorcycle.

I said, Oh boy.

And she went through the classes and uh she picked out a machine.

It was a little bit smaller, but it was probably more than she should have been handling.

And she went through all of the training.

And wouldn't you know it?

Over and over and over again, they told her, your bike, your motorcycle will go in the direction that you are looking.

If you want to make a sharp corner, then you have to look sharp to the left or to the right.

Somehow, our body leans in the direction that we are looking.

I've my sister raced horses and she followed the same principle.

Somehow, when you're riding a horse, it has this sense of where you're looking, and the horse will go in the direction that you are looking.

Probably because it feels us lean that direction.

But isn't that true in most of life?

We understand that perspective matters and we go in the direction we are looking.

That's why Isaiah begins this verse with these words, see.

Some of your translations will say, Can't you see it?

Isaiah is telling his people, look in the right direction, because perspective matters, because you go in the direction you are looking.

You see, this chapter was written during the Babylonian captivity, and the children of Israel had been conquered, and all of their things were destroyed, the holy city was gone, the temple was gone, the people were uprooted and moved to a place that was not their home.

And many of them wondered whether God really had abandoned them or if he was anywhere to be found.

They lived their lives in captivity and discouragement.

In fact, if you read the first 25, 30 chapters of Isaiah, you get a picture of how desperate and how despot they were.

They were lost, they were crushed, they were somehow almost at the brink of total annihilation.

And yet God still claimed them as his own.

God in Isaiah 43 says, I want you to know you still belong.

I want you to know I have not forgotten my covenant with you.

Yes, judgment has come upon you, but so will deliverance.

And Isaiah is saying to the people, shoulders back, chin up, because good things lie ahead.

God still claims them.

He says they still belong, and he understands that their identity is not determined by Babylonian captivity.

Their identity still rests in the Almighty God.

Here's what Isaiah is trying to say.

God is not finished.

Failure is not final.

Judgment is not the last word.

And God can create hope where it seems there is no hope to be found.

Does that resonate with you this morning?

He's trying to get them to change their perspective.

Why?

Because perspective matters.

Perspective helps shape what we believe.

If we're looking in the wrong direction or we have the wrong perspective, then we begin to believe that this is the present reality and nothing will ever change.

Perspective changes and shapes our emotional endurance.

I've been in ministry for 40 plus years, and uh there were good days and bad days in ministry, and I happened to be going through a season of just real struggle.

The church was struggling, and this elderly lady, I think she was almost 90 years old, she pulled me aside after church one day, and Mabel said to me, Pastor, I have a word for you.

When someone says that, you probably should listen.

She said, I've lived a long time, and I know that God is faithful, and there are better days ahead.

I can't tell you how much I needed to hear those words because it helped me to look ahead and I gained a new sense of excitement and endurance because I knew the season we were passing through was only a season, and that God had something very beautiful and special in mind for us.

Perspective helps the way we make day-to-day decisions.

If we can see way out there and see what God has envisioned for our lives, then we can make the course adjustments along the way.

And so it changes the way that we make decisions.

We're not only trying, we're no longer trying to survive, but God is teaching us how we can thrive and move forward and do amazing things.

Perspective changes our identity.

Perspective helps us notice when God is at work and we see his activity in our lives.

Perspective, my friends, can either trap us in the past or open a night a bright new future for us.

Can't you see it?

Isaiah says, I am doing a new thing.

What would happen if we changed our perspective and went on a wild chase after God's new thing?

What would happen in our own personal lives if we woke up in the morning and said, God, I know you've got something new and special for me today and for the world in which I must live.

And I want you to give me a good perspective of the future.

Perspective matters because what we see, where we look, determines how we live.

You see, if we only see captivity, then we see ourselves as prisoners.

But if we see God who makes the way in the wilderness, then we can live more even when the road appears to be dark and narrow.

Well, there are some examples in everyday life.

Sometimes we face setbacks, sometimes we feel defeated.

But God wants to turn our defeat as an invitation to trust in Him.

Sometimes we pass through a season of waiting.

Not my favorite place to be.

But God wants us to move beyond thinking of waiting as a wasted time, but a place where we can prepare for what God has in mind for us.

Sometimes we face difficult relationships, and sometimes we see those as irritants in our life and something we must endure.

But what if God sees it as an opportunity for us to develop grace and wisdom and boundaries in our lives?

A closed door can often be mistaken as rejection, but what would happen if we began to see the closed door as God redirecting us into bright new paths?

Perspective matters.

And the way we choose or the place we choose to look is the direction we will go.

We were called to be missionaries to Philadelphia in 2008, and in the fall of 2008, we found ourselves in the heart of Philadelphia, six and a half million people in the entire urban area, and there were six churches of the Nazarene in six million people.

And I remember laying in bed the first time or that first night, staring at the ceiling and saying, Oh God, if you don't do something, we are in big trouble.

The missionary outpost was Philadelphia First Church, a tiny little church situated directly across the street from the largest church or the largest school in the area, 4,500 students, and the students spoke 110 different languages in their homes when they went back.

What a mission field.

We weren't called to a place where there was one single language.

We understood that we were in very much a multicultural environment.

And to make a long story short, we the one of the first things we did was make a basketball court.

And suddenly kids from the neighborhood started showing up to play basketball.

One of the neighborhood kids was a girl by the name of Rochelle.

Rochelle kind of hung around and she eventually started to fit in with the youth group, and we begin to see Rochelle make some beautiful changes in her life.

Rochelle grew up over those eight and a half, nine years, and we watched her become a beautiful young Christian lady.

She graduated from high school, and Rochelle actually became one of our summer interns when we hosted teams that would come to Philadelphia to serve.

It was hard to leave because we saw kids like Rochelle grow in their faith and walk and come closer to the Lord.

Well, Rochelle stayed behind, attended Temple University, got her degree in social work, and started working full-time for the organization called Frontstep.

And the last I talked to the current CEO of Front Step, he was grooming Rochelle to become the new CEO of Front Step, which worked in the inner city.

She was moving towards getting her doctorate's degree, and she planned to come back and become the director of that wonderful organization.

It wasn't until I met with Wes a couple years ago that I heard the rest of Rochelle's story.

You see, when we moved into the neighborhood, we didn't know it, but Rochelle had been raised in foster care.

And she had gone from one foster care to another to another.

And many of the foster care places where she was stayed were folks that went to church, but their life at church was very different than their life at home.

Rochelle was raised in one abusive situation after another.

And in her heart, by the time she was a young teenager, she had made up her mind that she didn't want to have anything ever to do with God or the church.

You couldn't ask her, invite her, or coerce her, or even persuade her to become a part of any church.

And yet suddenly we found her on the basketball court playing basketball with all the other neighborhood kids.

And over the years, she began to open her heart to the Lord.

And something beautiful took place in her life, and she became a beautiful daughter of God.

Rochelle's perspective changed.

Her outlook on life changed.

My friends, if we are to be light in a dark world, we have this wonderful opportunity of sharing the light to the world of people like Rochelle who need to find new direction and new light and find Jesus in their lives.

Perspective matters.

And we go in the direction that we are looking.

The direction we looked was at our neighbors and our friends.

And it caused us to build a basketball court of all things.

So I want to invite you to look in several directions this morning.

Let's start by looking up.

Remember King Solomon when God was telling him he was going to be king and came and offered him whatever he wanted.

In 1 Kings 3:7, I just want to recite what the scripture says.

1 Kings 3:7

This is what King Solomon says.

Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in this place of my father David, but I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.

Your servant is here among your people, and you have chosen a great people, too numerous to count in number.

So he makes this request.

So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.

I think there's a three-point sermon in there somewhere.

For who is able to govern this great people?

Solomon was wise and tender-hearted enough to know that if he was going to follow God's will, he needed to look up.

Remember Psalm 121?

I lift my eyes unto the mountains.

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

You want to find good direction?

Look in the right place.

Look up.

Isaiah says, maybe you've memorized this, Isaiah 40 31, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They will mount up with wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint.

My friends, I choose today to keep my eyes on God.

My heavenly father, because when I do that, he helps me find new direction in our lives.

If you know me very long, you'll know that one of my favorite authors is Bob Goff, G-O-F-F.

He's kind of a goofy little character, and he's written probably a few dozen books along the way.

But in one of his books, he describes a journey that he took sailing from California to Hawaii.

And he said, we began by following our compass.

And we discovered over time that if a compass is used for a mile or maybe two miles, it can get you from point A to point B.

But if you follow that same compass for hundreds and hundreds of miles, you may miss your target by multiple miles.

You may never see the island that you're hoping to find.

He said, but if you look to the sky and you find a North Star and you follow the North Star in direction, in the direction you need to go, and use that as your guide, then you will find where you want to be.

If you were to use a compass to travel from California to Hawaii, you will miss the mark by many, many miles.

But my friends, when we look to God, He becomes the true north for our lives.

In Him, we find our true north and we find the direction He wants us to go.

We find the wisdom that we need.

We find the direction that we're looking for.

We find strength.

We find that life is so much better when we keep our eyes and our feet in step with his spirit.

We go in the direction we look.

Shall we start by looking up?

We go in the direction we should look.

We need to look in.

Psalm 139, verse 23 says, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Psalms 139:23

Test me and know if they're my anxious thoughts.

Once we find God, we need to ask, Lord, do you see anything in me that is not pleasing to you?

We often look to God to show us new things, and but sometimes we need to ask Him to show us what's happening in our heart.

Things we may be ignoring or things He wants to address, but we've looked in the wrong direction.

All looking to our inside allows God to work in our heart in a much deeper level.

He checks our intentions.

It allows God to work within us first so that we can find direction.

So first one is look up.

The second one is look in.

And then this could be the hardest one.

God calls us to look back.

Along the way throughout the narrative of salvation, God gives the children of Israel and the people in the New Testament landmarks.

Twelve stones, an altar, a staff.

And these things remind us of our past, and they tell us that God has been faithful to us.

I wear a ring on my finger.

I often forget it's even there.

But it serves as a reminder of the covenant I made with my wife, and it reminds others that I'm a married man and I'm taken.

They don't even have to ask.

God wants us to place reminders that help us remember what we have given to Him.

I put a ring on my finger to remind me that I belong to my lovely wife, Linda.

My mom and dad had seven kids.

You don't see very many families that are wealthy when they have seven kids because most of the effort goes into feeding the family and keeping them clothed, and that was the case with us.

I grew up on a dairy farm and my father owned a construction company, and it seemed to me like we were either doing really well or really poor.

There was one winter in particular when the storms in Kansas raged time after time after time.

Unfortunately, my father wound up in a long time in the hospital, and he was in a Denver vet hospital and spent weeks there recovering from some things that had happened.

The construction company had shut down and the snow was heavy.

My mom tells the story of her sitting at the dining room table looking out at a high snow drift at the end of her rope, wanting to know what to do next.

And as she looked at the snow drift, there was a bare spot in the ground in the middle of winter.

And the snow had melted just enough to expose a beautiful flower that was in full bloom.

My friends, that just doesn't happen.

Not in Kansas.

It may happen here in Ohio, but not in Kansas.

My mom told that story over and over and over again.

And it became the anchor that helped us to realize that all is not lost and that there is hope.

It's important to look back.

It reminds us of how God has worked.

It reminds us how far we have come.

It points to a brighter future.

It reminds us of the probability that we will not be in this place forever.

And it helps us to become resilient and robust as we follow Christ.

My friends, look back, count the victories, recognize the heroes, mark the landmines, learn from your mistakes.

And remember there is a difference between remembering the past and dwelling in the past.

Remember, Isaiah said, Can't you see it?

I am doing a new thing.

After spending 40 chapters telling him all the gloom and doom, he turns the page and he says, Now I want you to see a beautiful picture.

I'm going to land the plane here pretty soon.

Look up, look in, look back, and look around.

One of my favorite verses is Luke chapter 10, verse 2.

Luke 10:2

It reminds us of this.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

God wants us to see the harvest that lies before us.

And of course, you remember the classic verse in Matthew 28, 19 through 20, where he says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded.

And then he says, And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

Look out.

Look around.

Because when we see a need, we catch God's vision.

When we see someone becoming isolated or preoccupied, then we can draw them back.

Looking around causes us to stretch for things we normally would not.

Looking around gives us new vision.

It raises expectation.

It keeps us from making hasty, impulsive decisions, and it makes us so that we're willing to make sacrifices today in order to reach the goal that God has in mind.

There's a proverb, it's in the 29th chapter.

You may remember it from the old King James version.

The King James Version says, where there is no vision, the people perish.

Other versions may say, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.

I pray that God will give me a clear vision.

And vision brings unity, it engages people, it brings life and vitality.

Vision, my friends, is attractive, it draws people in, and vision glorifies God.

Look out, look around.

God has something new for you in your life.

Well, we've decided this morning, hopefully, or consider the fact, that our perspective is important.

And where we look determines where we go.

Look up, look in, look around, look back.

And the last one could be an explanation point.

Look out.

Because when we do all of these things, God is going to do amazing things.

I like to think, look out, world, here he comes.

God is giving us a new vision.

There's an illustration, it's probably more legend than history.

It's the story of Sir Christopher Wren, who was the architect who built St.

Paul's Cathedral.

And it is told that Christopher Wren went out on the building site.

It took almost 35 years to build St.

John's Cathedral.

And one day he stopped and he saw a man laying brick and he asked the man, What are you doing?

And he said, in a grumpy voice, Can't you see?

I'm laying brick.

And he walked a little further, and there was a man working steady and hard.

And he interrupted and he said, So, sir, what are you doing?

The man stepped back and he said, Can't you see?

I'm building a wall.

And the legend says or goes that he went just a little bit further and he saw this man joyfully with skill and happiness in his heart, just building and fixing and doing.

And he asked the man, so what are you doing?

The man took a step back and he put his hands in his pockets and he said, Can't you see it?

I'm building a cathedral.

You see, perspective matters.

Sometimes I think we spend more of our time laying bricks than we do in building cathedrals.

I'm gonna ask the worship team to come and prepare to close our worship service this morning with a song.

So, what does it mean to revision?

Look up, look in, look out, look around, look back, and let God begin to reshape your life.

Where are you at today?

I don't know.

Maybe you have experienced illness or loss.

Maybe you've gone through a major life change.

Maybe you've been caught in some difficult circumstances.

You and God know that story.

But I hope today you'll be able to find new perspective.

Because perspective matters.

And don't forget that you go in the direction where you look.

It has been such a joy for Linda and I to become friends with you all and to feel so much a part of this body and this family.

And I just want you to know, church, that God is doing something amazing.

God is doing something beautiful.

And if you look in the right direction, you'll notice, you'll notice.

Would you stand with me as we sing our closing song this morning?

As it is known in our community, Northwest Church is committed to discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, with inspired worship and intentional ministry.

People from all walks of life are welcome to come and receive this following numbers.

Our family is diverse, multicultural, and also not perfect in love with Jesus.

Join us online at wneas.org.

God bless you.