Why not emotionally attach to your mental perceptions about God? I know it’s hard to imagine what you can’t really imagine. For when you try to grasp the infinitude of God, it is literally impossible to do this from your own human abilities. At best, Tozer writes, “All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him.”

But we can connect with Him through His Son and can be revived by the Spirit of Christ. This alternative to emotionally linking with our most tragic problems serves as an excellent way to live life to its fullest meaning. I encourage you to think about this and to conquer your worst fears about the adversity you’re trying to overcome…

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Like a fox sneaking into the hen house, we never saw an unsuspecting variable against what we had thought as foundational to prudent decision-making. Nevertheless, is this really surprising to have gigantic trials when trying to move against the winds of change? Not really. On a regular basis many of us undergo major trials when trying to make critical decisions.

Curiously I’m intrigued about how we consider our ways of living versus how we might consider how to live according to the ways of God.

Think about this… Oftentimes we worship God on our terms only. In other words, we’re never really surprised by Him nor are we overwhelmed by His presence. Too often, we create the idea of God by what we can comprehend or by how secure we feel or by how we can control our circumstances evenhandedly. Rarely does anything actually surprise us when we predictably control our own outcomes of faith. In a sense, many are afraid to walk by real faith. And as a result, an altered sense of Christianity becomes created. Isn’t this religious idol worship? Each one of us can answer this question for ourselves.

I think that sudden attacks against our logical planning are ways for God to test our faith. It’s one method by which God examines our hearts under duress. Do we look toward His inner Spirit trustfully for guidance? Or do we skirt about trying to find solutions through the abilities of other men or by our own survival instincts? Sadly, commonly and frequently, I think we tend to drench ourselves into mere humanism.

Perhaps our physical perplexities are ways to open our eyes to the spiritual…

Relative to our current situation, we’re going to let the dust settle so to speak before we react too impulsively. Then we’re going to pursue the voice of God for His wisdom. Even if things do not go our way as we think they should, I’m sure we’ll learn to live by His ways through this process.

Although the unthinkable occurs for all of us, will you opt to consider this approach to deal with your own painful trials?

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For instance, it seems like I hear many stories of people who are my age – around the 50-mark – who are essentially starting over with their lives. Retirement is simply a fading idea, another dream dashed against the financial realities in which we live.

Tragedy in nearly every form has literally destroyed the fabric of their existence, like where to live, what to do, how to deal with painful affliction and how to reconstruct when feeling out of place, just to mention the short list. Life was supposed to get easier, wasn’t it? Not so for many who are bewildered.

I encourage you not to panic like so many others. You’re not expected to solve your quagmire of problems with one-stop miraculous solutions. People do not live or die based on making only one decision to remedy several problems or to speed up the recovery process. Rather, a certain pattern of life is determined by a succession of decisions.

When trying to tackle gigantic problems, like the ones we face currently, the challenges aren’t necessarily to find the perfect solution or to get things back to the ways of yesterday; but rather, the mark set before us is to counteract fear and intimidation with an open mindset toward wisdom. One-time decisions aren’t really enough to solve the enormity of gunky problems left for our clean-up. On the other hand, the ways of wisdom promise to deliver us from our bad circumstances and also, to give us eventual redemption.

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To glean the most, I propose the following: Maximize the “good.” Starve the “bad.”To complain in the midst of any long, drawn-out trial is simply making “less” of who Christ is within us. It is during these times of spiritual blindness that we must decrease so that He can increase. He who is within us is greater that he who is in the world.

We must fully believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome periods of spiritual discouragement. Think of it this way. As we grow in faith, the Holy Spirit purifies our minds about the real image of God. In essence, this same Spirit can cure our periods of doubt and discouragement.  It is vital to contemplate about the true nature of God. Regardless of our circumstances, the nature of God is entirely “good,” even when things do not go as planned.

To cure spiritual blindness is to begin to see things as Christ sees them.

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To elaborate on my blog yesterday, it is essential to focus intently on belief in order to see the depth of healing that is found in the manuscript of life. So when we compartmentalize our pains to preserve ourselves from additional hurts, we inevitably create further boundaries from seeing the intrinsic nature of God. This form of self-protection clouds our vision about how to live a better life. It blocks us from seeing the infinite side of Christ, as well as receiving the prescriptive qualities from His abiding love. Our wholeness is not built upon our ability to make our own broken parts to conform to a perceived sense of harmony. Instead, and by faith, our wholeness occurs because of our full belief in Him.

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Pain tends to cause each one of us to give up on the pursuit for better living. Its nature tears apart any harmony between our body, soul and spirit. While we consciously try to keep our parts intact in order to soar above the clouds, pain does the opposite, knocking us down from our pursuits toward fulfillment, accomplishment and happiness.

As we already know, pain comes in all forms. We might not be able to see its neurological impulses with the human eye. But we can certainly measure pain medically-speaking, and more importantly, we can see its devastation upon the human condition. Quite frankly, chronic pain seems cruel at times. Yet, this does not mean that we have to give up on living life to its fullest.

To live life abundantly, we must be able to “see” what this means in terms of our expectations. Usually, we pursue the better parts of life by moving toward things which bring us joy. And when pain interferes with our vision, we tend to drop everything in which we place our hope.

But to really live, we must be able to see. When we place our vision on things around us, we capture very limited views about how to live effectively. From this myopic perspective, the balance of the parts is critical for our sense of stability and vitality. So if we live our life based on what we see and how things line up correctly in the scheme of the universe, then pain certainly disrupts order and any sense of self-actualization.

Nonetheless, this is where God begins to renew the mind of man through His perspective of vision. It starts with Himself. God does not require the exact harmony of things for Himself to remain and to live within perfect unity. There are no contradictions within God. His infinite qualities communicate the divine aspect to man through His Son.

We can live because we can see how to live by the example of Christ. Things of pain and brokenness are made whole through belief. We can see hope through Christ. We really can’t find hope through ongoing destructiveness. Our ability to see better living occurs because of belief. It is our belief that allows us to dream and to envision and to hope, which lures us on the road to better living.

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Theological terms like born-again, new creation and regenerate man, just to mention a few, represent the newness of life for anyone who places their faith in Jesus Christ. And when this declaration of salvation occurs, literally, as well as instantaneously, all who believe undergo a miraculous spiritual conversion. It’s beautiful. There is no other reality like this. As examples of this transformation, peace, freedom, newness, forgiveness and love begin to connect you with an awesome, infinite God. You are given a clean slate by God to live life fully.

Back to my point…Although this new relationship with God occurs, this does not mean your body also undergoes immediate perfection. In fact the contrary occurs. You will only be given a newly-designed body when you actually die, meaning when your spirit actually leaves your dead body. For now, expect the aches and pains of the body to scream even louder against the assurance of your newly-found faith in Jesus Christ. Your mortal body will try everything to pull you back into the slavery of sin.

That’s why it is critical “to live according to the Spirit” and to put to death the desires of your body. The Spirit has come to make you free against the chains of this world, regardless of your painful suffering and the length of time it lasts. You will not find this new life nor will you discover the meaningfulness of the kingdom of God if you continually follow the instincts of your mortal body.

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To me, it’s plain to see how the fear of the Lord creates the feeling of self-defeatism against any measure of human pride and power. But more importantly, when down at the bottom, it’s also fascinating to witness how His loving right hand reaches out for the downtrodden, lifting them freely to a place of comfort.

Though the fear of the Lord definitely sparks absolute dread, the healing portion of fear emerges with great evidences of wisdom and love. Though the flu aggravated other neuropathic pain syndromes within my body, I’m glad I had the opportunity to “live” according to the Spirit during this unpleasant past week.

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Pain is something that really can’t be perfectly conquered if chronic and reoccurring. Therefore, disappointment tries to usher us into the corridors of self-pity – that’s for sure. The process to walk through painful trials is filled with ongoing challenges, feelings of disappointment as well as feelings of accomplishment, regardless of the size.

Pain always reminds me about my own weaknesses, beating against any extra energy I have mustered for the day. At this juncture, even if I meander back and forth for a few hours, I try to forget the painful emotions associated with chronic suffering. And instead, I focus on thinking about the brighter meaning of self-development between this marvelous connection of the nature of God and me. This one fact alone always seems to pull me from the gutter of self-pity, inevitably fueling my attitude to continue to run the race of life.

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To grow in vision means this…It means we must begin to discover what we will not initially see within our physical surroundings. And it means that we need to understand the unseen things without reducing them to something of lesser meaning or to something predictable and manageable for our controlling interests. This commonly seen pattern defeats the purpose of developing a deeper vision about life.

To grow in vision means to grow by faith in catching a clearer glimpse of what the spiritual world actually represents and how it impacts our entire being, not just our lives but those around us as well. As we grow in vision, we will also grow in the power of faith. Tozer writes,

The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man.

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