"Half-Full or Half Empty—The Power of God’s Perspective"
(I Thessalonians 5:16-18)
Main Idea: Seeing circumstances from God’s perspective transforms the way I face them.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend my thirty-fifth high school reunion of Hot Springs High School. I had not attended one since 1982 but for some nostalgic reason I wanted to go back and see people in my graduating class. One of my main reasons to go back was to see one of my best friends, Coy. Coy and I became friends in the fourth grade, went to OBU together, were in each other’s weddings and have stayed in contact through the years. It is because of Coy’s insistence that I altered the destructive direction of my life at age 19 to follow Christ fully that I am where I am today. I owe a debt to him I can never repay.
Understand, our lives and personalities are very different. Other than seminary in Texas, I have lived within the borders of Arkansas all my life. Coy, on the other hand, has lived in Denver, Phoenix and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I have been a Baptist pastor for thirty years. Coy has been in ministry, counseling, motivational speaker; currently he has a business that teaches fly fishing to men with cancer and is captain of his own sailboat six months of the year in the Virgin Islands. When our last surviving parent died, I led a quiet graveside service in Hot Springs. He had a barbeque in Waco, Texas. Coy has always lived large. I have always lived within more conventional limits.
So after the reunion party on Friday night Kathy and I met Coy and his wife Nell for breakfast on Saturday. We began to talk about life and he encouraged me to come to the Virgin Islands and go sailing. My brain was running with all kinds of dutiful reasons why that couldn’t happen but what came out of my mouth was, "Coy, I’m basically a boring person." I regretted it the moment I said it because it wasn’t completely true. But when you compare scraping bugs off your windshield after driving from Waldenburg with wiping salt spray off your face after sailing the Caribbean, it just doesn’t hold up! Coy, because his personality and occupation are to enhance the positives, wrote me a very compassionate email, wanting to help me work through my perspective so that I wouldn’t come to the end of my life as "a boring person."
Now the truth is I am not a boring person! At least one night in the week I stay up until 10:00! At least 10% of the time I don’t order the same thing at a restaurant! At least 10% of my ties have another color than blue or red and at least 10% of my time I think about something other than church! If that’s not variety and spontaneity, I don’t know what is! Okay, the truth is I am just by personality a person that isn’t all that exciting but neither am I all that boring either. That’s my personality: 90% Eeyore and 10% Willie Nelson.
With that combination I am destined, by personality, to see the glass of life’s circumstances as half-empty rather than half-full. If there is the smallest dark cloud on the horizon, my personality wants to find it. If there is a downside to something, I want to know it. If something is great, I can compare it to something not so great. If I choose, when I see the glass of life’s circumstances, I can see it as half-empty, not half-full.
Then you come up against a passage like the one we look at this morning and you realize that it is God’s express will that I, as a believer in Jesus Christ, see the glass of life’s circumstances as half-full, not half-empty. If I am going to be obedient to God’s desires, then I will choose to see the glass of life’s circumstances from his perspective. Doing that transforms my attitude, my personality and my perspective. It may or may not affect my circumstances but it changes the way I see them because I am seeing them from God’s vantage point. I love the way The Message translation states these verses. "Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live." "This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ and to live." What I want us to see today is that seeing circumstances from God’s perspective transforms the way I face them.
When we first started this series in June, I reminded you that every sentence in Scripture has a context. That it isn’t there randomly or without thought or intention. I want to back away from this verse and remember the context of this passage. Recall, if you would, that by the time Paul has written this letter he has already completed one tour as a missionary throughout what we know as Syria and Turkey today. On that tour, he was beaten, robbed, stoned, sick and rejected. When he signs up again for another tour his mentor and ministry partner get in an argument and part ways. He goes to northern Greece where he is beaten and jailed in Philippi, run out of town in Berea, escaped assault in Thessalonica, and was alone, depressed and worried in Athens. By the time he arrives in the city of Corinth, from which this letter is written, he is really on his last emotional leg. He tells the Corinthians, "I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling" (I Cor. 2:3).
If you are honest, you have to say that he doesn’t seem to be very positive. The glass of life’s circumstances seems more half-empty than half-full. If that was how he was by the time he got to the city of Corinth, how can he write back to the Thessalonians, "Always be joyful. Keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful…"? (I Thess. 5:16-18a) I believe it occurred one very lonely night there in the city of Corinth when Paul saw the glass not only half-empty but also completely empty. It was on that night that Jesus himself came to Paul and said to him, "Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me." (Acts 18:9-10) Jesus told him, "Paul, you need to see the glass of your circumstances from my perspective, because where I am the glass is overflowing with blessing."
Sometime after that moment I believe Paul made a choice, as Coach Steve Roberts says, between "I will" and "I want to." That choice was that it was God’s will for him to recognize that the size, difficulty, threat and fear of his circumstance was dwarfed, minimized and shaped by God’s unlimited supply of power, strength, wisdom and life, that particularly all that God had done in Christ Jesus to save Paul made everything else look small. He would say, "Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later…What can we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?" (Romans 8:18, 31-32).
Paul made a choice, a decision, that from God’s perspective the glass of life’s circumstances was half-full, more than half-full; it was over the top and running down the sides. I believe Paul made a conscious decision about whatever life’s circumstances might be he was going to view them from God’s perspective. By making this choice he was a transformed person who could say about life’s circumstances:
I realize that was a long introduction but if you don’t see the power of the point of decision for Paul, these words sound little better than the words, "Don’t Worry, Be Happy." In the last two weeks people or extended families in our church have faced critical, life-threatening medical diagnoses. I have a close ministry friend whose wife has a type of stage-four cancer. There are people who have lost jobs. There are those with just life issues with marriage, work, jobs, kids, grandkids, grown kids, no kids, school, fear and failure. You have to ask yourself, "So, is the glass half-full or half-empty?" From your view and mine, it’s looking pretty dry. From God’s view, it’s running down the side. So how do you get there? How do you see things from God’s perspective?
Before I start, let me give you one principle that applies here that a friend taught me years ago. It’s this: Change comes because you act your way out of feeling, not feel your way out of acting. In other words, if you wait until you feel like seeing the glass of life’s circumstances is half-full, you are going to be waiting a long time. You are basically being ruled by your emotions and if things are good then you are good. Instead, if we start acting like we want to feel then our emotions will catch up to that. So what I am saying to you is that each one of these steps is a choice to act in spite of the circumstance. If you are going to see life’s circumstances from God’s perspective, it will be a choice that you make continually until it becomes the dominant side of your personal perspective.
To enable me to see things from God’s perspective, the Bible says, "I will always find a reason to have joy" (I Thess 5:15). Paul says, "Always be joyful." This is not a picture of someone who is ridiculously giddy in the face of a horrible tragedy. It is, instead, the persuasion of a person who has made the choice to find a reason for joy in, not because of, a circumstance of life. Joy was an overwhelming characteristic of the early church through any and all circumstances. Commentator Dr. Leon Morris writes, "They thought more of their Lord than of their difficulties, more of their spiritual riches in Christ than of their poverty on earth, more of the glorious future when their Lord should come again than of their unhappy past." (The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, p. 172, Erdmans, 1991) Those early Christians made a choice to find a reason to have joy.
What do you do to always find a reason to have joy, especially from where you sit the glass is half-empty? I believe more than anything else it starts with a release of yourself to the joy already yours because of the Holy Spirit’s living within you. The fruit of the Spirit is joy (Gal. 5:22). Joy lives in me and lives in you if you are a believer in Jesus Christ. The Spirit’s joy wants to be released in you at all times but especially when life’s circumstances are beyond impossible. You and I have to start by quietly confessing the despair we feel and invite the Spirit to release his joy. If you want to see life’s circumstance from God’s perspective, then make the decision to release yourself to the Spirit’s joy. Choose to always find a reason to have joy.
The next "I will" statement is "I will continually connect with God in prayer" (I Thess 5:17). Paul says, "Keep on praying." It’s interesting that the word Paul uses for prayer here is the word for all kinds of prayer not just prayers of petition or request. It really is the idea of having an on-going conversation with God, one that continually stays open and isn’t limited by place, time or circumstance. The reason this is so vital to our being able to see the glass of life’s circumstances from God’s perspective is that prayer has the ability to remove the barriers to our vision of our circumstances. In other words, if I am struggling to see the glass as half-full or half-empty, prayer is the tool God will consistently use to help me see.
How does that work? It works like this: Choose a circumstance that you are facing. It may be school, a class, a teacher, an illness, a child, a parent, a friendship—anything that has caused you to be distracted from God’s perspective and is draining your joy. As you begin to talk with God about it you tell him how frustrated, sad, discouraged, hurting, lonely, angry or tired you are. When you do that you are by virtue of your prayer declaring your dependence upon God and his ability or power to act on your behalf. As you carry on with him this ongoing conversation, you find yourself more and more dependent on him and less dependent on you. You discover that God has joined you in the dialogue. It doesn’t mean the circumstance changes but you begin to have a different perspective of the circumstance.
E.M. Bounds says, "Prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude of a wrestler with God." Your prayer may begin in belligerent shouts but "keep on praying" because in that conversation you will begin to see the circumstance from God’s perspective.
"I will always find a reason for joy." "I will continually connect with God in prayer." There’s a third "I will" and it’s this: "I will consistently seize the chance to be grateful" (I Thess. 5:18a). Paul says, "No matter what happens always be thankful." I hope you see in each one of these statements the extremes that Paul places on our actions. He has said that "always" we should have joy, never stop praying and now he says that gratitude should flow out of us regardless of what happens. Some of the other translations have the phrase "in everything" or "in all circumstances" we are to give thanks. That helps us because it tells us that our gratitude is not "for" the circumstance but "in" the circumstance.
Here is something I have learned about seeing life’s circumstances from God’s perspective: If I want to, I can find a reason to be grateful in the circumstance and over time, by God’s grace, I may even become grateful for the circumstance. That isn’t true for everything or for everyone. It is God’s desire that we find a reason for gratitude in a circumstance but God is the only one who can bring us to a place of gratitude for a circumstance. I can, if I choose, make it my determination to give in to bitterness and resentment in the circumstance, refusing to even look for one reason for gratitude. The result is only going to be further resistance and rejection of God and eliminate any place of growth that may come to me through the circumstance. However, if I am consistently finding a reason to be grateful, I am opening my life up to seeing my circumstance from God’s perspective. "I will consistently find a reason to be grateful."
"I will always find a reason to have joy." "I will continually connect with God in prayer." "I will consistently find a reason to be grateful." As I do those things I am making the choice that "I will fully trust that God knows what’s best" (I Thess. 5:18b). Paul brings this passage to one dramatic conclusion: "…for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus." He is saying that it is God’s will for me to "always be joyful" "keep on praying," and "no matter what happens, always be thankful." It is God’s will, intent and purpose for me to see the glass of life’s circumstances as half-full, not half-empty. My personality may be melancholy but my Christianity will not excuse it. If I let my personality control my Christianity, then that is disobedience to God’s express will for me. I’m not talking about someone with clinical mental health issues but our choosing to just be negative, resentful and ungrateful.
How can I say that? Because if I am able to do the three "I wills…," then it is evidence that underneath it all I trust that God knows what’s best for my life. When Paul uses the word "this," he is not talking about the circumstance, the specific issue you face, but the attitude we should have overall. That attitude is one that trusts that God knows what is best for my life. It is in that place of dependence and trust that I have the chance to see the glass of life’s circumstances from God’s perspective, not mine. It is God’s express will for you to see the glass half-full not half empty. I can only do that when I trust that he knows what is best.
What about the circumstances you face? How do you see them? Do you see the glass as half-full or half-empty? Will you make the decision and say, "I will always find a reason to have joy." (v. 16) "I will continually connect with God in prayer" (v. 17) "I will consistently seize the chance to be grateful" (v. 18a) "I will fully trust that God knows what is best for me."(v. 18b) Don’t let your circumstances keep you from obedience to God’s clear will for you.
When I tried to think of some way to illustrate the glass half-full, I thought of a dessert called: "The Chocolate Mess." On the screen is a picture of the most awesome dessert ever known to man. It is called "The Chocolate Mess." This dessert is found at The MarketPlace Grill in Springdale, Conway and Fort Smith. They take a glass and freeze it, dip the glass in chocolate, set it on a plate and then they put in scoops of ice cream, pour hot fudge over that, add whip cream and nuts and give you a spoon! It is a mess but it is unbelievable.
The thing about The Chocolate Mess is that it is full and running down the sides with pleasure. There is no reservation about its contents—it is extreme and overflowing. Whatever circumstance you face, God sees it just like that—not half empty but full to the top and running down the sides with his presence, love, grace and life. I am not saying it isn’t a mess but it is God’s mess—it is his perspective that will make the difference. Seeing circumstances from God’s perspective transforms the way I face them. Is your glass half-full or half-empty?
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor
First Baptist Church
Jonesboro, Arkansas