2009 - Day 21 - New Perspective

January 21, 2009 … Swindoll’s Topic for Today: New Perspective

Passage of the Day: Genesis 42: 25 - 28 ... 25 Then Joseph gave a command to fill their sacks with grain, to restore every man’s money to his sack, and to give them provisions for the journey. Thus he did for them. 26 So they loaded their donkeys with the grain and departed from there. 27 But as one of them opened his sack to give his donkey feed at the encampment, he saw his money; and there it was, in the mouth of his sack. 28 So he said to his brothers, “My money has been restored, and there it is, in my sack!” Then their hearts failed them and they were afraid, saying to one another, “What is this that God has done to us?”

My Journal for Today: This is a most powerful and personal segment of Joseph’s story for me; well, in this case about the brothers. It tells of God using Joseph’s interaction with the brothers to pour out the Lord’s prevenient grace into their lives, giving them a new perspective on life.

You can read the unfolding story from the passage; but as I said, these circumstances from God’s word have a deep and personal impact on me. They take me back to April 13, 1983, when God poured out His prevenient grace into my life to give me new perspective.
Prevenient grace is God’s grace which “comes before.” It is when God sets about life circumstances to either draw the lost to Himself or to bring the Christian into a closer relationship with God. On 4/13/83, as a lost soul, I was confronted with a set of life circumstances which, as for Joseph’s brothers, communicated that God was in control of my life; and He desired me to repent and go a different way.

Sure, for the brothers, it was Joseph who had carefully given the money back to them; but God used that pre-planned incident to give the brothers the ability to view life as God desired them to see things. And that’s what happened to me when I listened to the testimony of a young quadriplegic in 1983; and God used that testimony and the words from Phil. 4: 13 [I hope you have that one memorized] to help me see that I needed God’s strength in my life to deal with my human failings. I, like Joseph’s brothers, after denying God’s view for so many years, could finally see what I had been and where I needed to go. I, like the brothers in today’s scenario, finally had the perspective on that day in 1983 to be reborn of mind and heart. It was the day when the truth of 2nd Cor. 5: 17 came alive for me … the day that the old me had died (see also Gal. 2: 20); and a new way of seeing the world was now my way of seeing things.

Perhaps you were like Joseph’s brothers or Bill Berry or the Apostle Paul, whom we remember was knocked from his donkey on the road to Damascus and given a new perspective on life [see Acts 9: 1 – 19]. Maybe like me, you can remember when your perspective on life changed. Perhaps you can’t put a stake in the ground of time to remember when it happened for you; but you know that God’s Spirit is in your born-again heart and allows you to see life with conviction and direction because your life is yielded to God in a pursuit of His will and His way. You still have a sin nature; and you still must see the world through very human eyes, but God’s Spirit and His word, since you’ve surrendered to His Lordship, help to illumine your path in life and you are, because of God’s perspective, becoming new in Him (see Ps. 119 – yes, all of it - and Phil. 1: 6).

Joseph’s brothers would never see life the same way after the incident recorded in today’s passage; and as we’ll read in upcoming devotionals, God’s full power from His prevenient grace was about to unfold as God and life would reveal Joseph being alive. But right now God was using this set of circumstances to get them to a place where they could see their sinfulness of past choices and a willingness to surrender to God as their Lord. They had a NEW PERSPECTIVE. And we all need to have that kind of perspective on life, always seeking to see life through God’s eyes. How about you? Are you seeking to find God’s way of looking at your life circumstances; because if you are truly a Christian and trying to view life through only your own eyes, you, like Joseph’s brothers, are going to have to confront life through the eyes of agonizing reflection; … until, that is, you are able to surrender and move toward God and away from self?

Take it from one who’s been there and is now one who sees the folly of trying to view life through my own sinful eyes. It’s much better to put on the glasses of Godly perspective and do all I (we) can to see life through the 20/20 vision of God’s will. Without such a view of life, I become spiritually blind; but I know from my Messiah’s mission statement (found in Luke 4: 18) that He desires to help me see my way to follow Him through His eyes. And that will be my continual pursuit … His vision … to walk in His way … through His word as my light in the darkness (see Ps. 119: 105).

My Prayer Today: Give me Your perspective, Lord. Help me to see life through Your lenses; and to find Your path as I walk to follow You. Amen