A year of expanded perspective - January 12, 2014
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Pastor Dale Lloyd
Scripture Reading: 2Kings 6: 8 – 23
Throughout the coming year a slide will appear at the beginning of each service. Its purpose is to communicate the theme of what I feel God is speaking concerning this year: The Year of Expanded Perspective.
Please understand the importance of this theme – EXPANDED perspective. One of the issues we must address regarding perspective is that left to itself it tends to narrow and shrink. This is a particular danger with aging – and let me just say that it’s not just those over the age of forty that are aging. Regardless of your present age you are aging. With that – and especially with a few significant disappointments – there comes this risk of narrowed perspective.
It seems to me that when we are alive in Christ and expanding in our experience of the life of Christ our perspective will be expanding and enlarging rather than shrinking and narrowing. For that reason I believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to an expanded perspective. He has a great deal to show us.
I started this last Sunday by dealing with the story of Elisha’s servant – a servant who experienced a very significant transformation of perspective. One minute his perspective was limited to the physical realities of his situation, and everything in that realm struck fear to his heart. He and Elisha were surrounded by an enemy army. Believe me; they had not come to bless them. Fear rode in on that perspective of the physical realm and the servant cried out this panicked question: “What shall we do?”
That question is very revealing and what it reveals is that almost always when our narrowed perspective generates fear we go to the issue of doing. “What shall we do?” implies there is something we can do, must do and we need to do, do, do, do, and do some more. Elisha’s prayer reveals a completely different perspective.
He does not address the hands and feet – which has to do with doing – he addresses the eyes; “O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” It strikes me as being the correct order. Doing is dependent upon seeing. Doing is directed, or disciplined, or structured by seeing. What is the value of doing if we are not first seeing? Seeing determines our doing.
In the North American church there may not be a lack of doing, but there certainly seems to be a lack of seeing, a lack of vision and a lack of expanded perspective. Consequently the fruit of the doing lacks any real sense of Christ-centeredness.
The question I am posing at the beginning of this New Year is not, what are you doing? It is what are you seeing? The question is not – where are your hands and feet? It is where are your eyes? And what we all need to be aware of is that our hands and feet (our doing) will eventually reveal exactly where our eyes are.
Let me illustrate that: Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, and one saw stars. Two people can be placed in the same position and yet their perspectives can be entirely different.
A government can take a Nelson Mandela and lock him up physically for 27 years. His physical world can be narrowed and shrunk to the size of a prison cell. What you cannot lock up and narrow is his inner perspective. What you can’t lock up is his prophetic seeing – the vision of the eyes of his spirit. After all those years of incarceration you find his hands and feet involved in doing the work of government from the top position of government.
The issue is not at all where we are physically this morning. If I was just in some other church, some other job, some other family, some other marriage and some other financial situation. I speak this with sensitivity but also with deep conviction – the primary issue is not where you are circumstantially; it’s what you are seeing from where you are and how you are seeing where you are. Does your perspective expand beyond where your feet and hands presently are?
I want to finish this by referencing two details reported in this ancient story. The first happened before Elisha prayed; the second after he prayed.
Notice: “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The transformation of the servant’s perspective begins with the testimony of one whose perspective has already been changed. Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, and one saw stars. Both Elisha and his servant are in the exact same circumstances; they are looking out through the same set of bars. The servant sees nothing but mud. Elisha sees the stars.
And what I love about this – and we really need to hear and regard this – their relationship was such that each could be honest and speak freely to the other concerning their very different perspectives. We have to understand that the servant’s perspective was not wrong – it was not a lie. There really was an enemy army surrounding the city. The only issue with his perspective was that it stopped short of that broadened, expanded perspective to which Elisha had already come.
How did Elisha address this narrowed perspective? Again, he testified out of what he knew to be true on the basis of his own perspective: “those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” He did not condemn, judge or reject his servant. He simply shared his own enlarged perspective. Notice also that Elisha did not hammer his servant over the head with his testimony. He shared it and then he – WHAT??? – he prayed.
This act of prayer is vital. This is Elisha’s confession or acknowledgement that he is powerless to change his servant’s perspective. In fact it’s not even his responsibility to change his servant’s perspective. Notice carefully his prayer: “O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.”
Look at that prayer as a confession and it looks like this: Only God has the power to open his eyes. Only God can give sight and cause him to see. Only God has the ability to sovereignly transform and change his perspective.
The second detail – the one following the prayer was this: And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw... Who opened his eyes? Elisha? The servant? Absolutely not! It was God and God alone.
It is possible that we spend too much time trying to pry open the eyes of those caught in the fear of a narrowed perspective. Perhaps we should simply share the testimony of that perspective God has opened our eyes to, and then petition God to do what only God can do – open the eyes of the heart that they and we all may see – and that this seeing will expand and widen and broaden with endless increase.
2014 is going to be a year of increased prayer.
Scripture Reading: 2Kings 6: 8 – 23
Throughout the coming year a slide will appear at the beginning of each service. Its purpose is to communicate the theme of what I feel God is speaking concerning this year: The Year of Expanded Perspective.
Please understand the importance of this theme – EXPANDED perspective. One of the issues we must address regarding perspective is that left to itself it tends to narrow and shrink. This is a particular danger with aging – and let me just say that it’s not just those over the age of forty that are aging. Regardless of your present age you are aging. With that – and especially with a few significant disappointments – there comes this risk of narrowed perspective.
It seems to me that when we are alive in Christ and expanding in our experience of the life of Christ our perspective will be expanding and enlarging rather than shrinking and narrowing. For that reason I believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to an expanded perspective. He has a great deal to show us.
I started this last Sunday by dealing with the story of Elisha’s servant – a servant who experienced a very significant transformation of perspective. One minute his perspective was limited to the physical realities of his situation, and everything in that realm struck fear to his heart. He and Elisha were surrounded by an enemy army. Believe me; they had not come to bless them. Fear rode in on that perspective of the physical realm and the servant cried out this panicked question: “What shall we do?”
That question is very revealing and what it reveals is that almost always when our narrowed perspective generates fear we go to the issue of doing. “What shall we do?” implies there is something we can do, must do and we need to do, do, do, do, and do some more. Elisha’s prayer reveals a completely different perspective.
He does not address the hands and feet – which has to do with doing – he addresses the eyes; “O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” It strikes me as being the correct order. Doing is dependent upon seeing. Doing is directed, or disciplined, or structured by seeing. What is the value of doing if we are not first seeing? Seeing determines our doing.
In the North American church there may not be a lack of doing, but there certainly seems to be a lack of seeing, a lack of vision and a lack of expanded perspective. Consequently the fruit of the doing lacks any real sense of Christ-centeredness.
The question I am posing at the beginning of this New Year is not, what are you doing? It is what are you seeing? The question is not – where are your hands and feet? It is where are your eyes? And what we all need to be aware of is that our hands and feet (our doing) will eventually reveal exactly where our eyes are.
Let me illustrate that: Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, and one saw stars. Two people can be placed in the same position and yet their perspectives can be entirely different.
A government can take a Nelson Mandela and lock him up physically for 27 years. His physical world can be narrowed and shrunk to the size of a prison cell. What you cannot lock up and narrow is his inner perspective. What you can’t lock up is his prophetic seeing – the vision of the eyes of his spirit. After all those years of incarceration you find his hands and feet involved in doing the work of government from the top position of government.
The issue is not at all where we are physically this morning. If I was just in some other church, some other job, some other family, some other marriage and some other financial situation. I speak this with sensitivity but also with deep conviction – the primary issue is not where you are circumstantially; it’s what you are seeing from where you are and how you are seeing where you are. Does your perspective expand beyond where your feet and hands presently are?
I want to finish this by referencing two details reported in this ancient story. The first happened before Elisha prayed; the second after he prayed.
Notice: “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The transformation of the servant’s perspective begins with the testimony of one whose perspective has already been changed. Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, and one saw stars. Both Elisha and his servant are in the exact same circumstances; they are looking out through the same set of bars. The servant sees nothing but mud. Elisha sees the stars.
And what I love about this – and we really need to hear and regard this – their relationship was such that each could be honest and speak freely to the other concerning their very different perspectives. We have to understand that the servant’s perspective was not wrong – it was not a lie. There really was an enemy army surrounding the city. The only issue with his perspective was that it stopped short of that broadened, expanded perspective to which Elisha had already come.
How did Elisha address this narrowed perspective? Again, he testified out of what he knew to be true on the basis of his own perspective: “those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” He did not condemn, judge or reject his servant. He simply shared his own enlarged perspective. Notice also that Elisha did not hammer his servant over the head with his testimony. He shared it and then he – WHAT??? – he prayed.
This act of prayer is vital. This is Elisha’s confession or acknowledgement that he is powerless to change his servant’s perspective. In fact it’s not even his responsibility to change his servant’s perspective. Notice carefully his prayer: “O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.”
Look at that prayer as a confession and it looks like this: Only God has the power to open his eyes. Only God can give sight and cause him to see. Only God has the ability to sovereignly transform and change his perspective.
The second detail – the one following the prayer was this: And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw... Who opened his eyes? Elisha? The servant? Absolutely not! It was God and God alone.
It is possible that we spend too much time trying to pry open the eyes of those caught in the fear of a narrowed perspective. Perhaps we should simply share the testimony of that perspective God has opened our eyes to, and then petition God to do what only God can do – open the eyes of the heart that they and we all may see – and that this seeing will expand and widen and broaden with endless increase.
2014 is going to be a year of increased prayer.