You always have a choice!

Nuggets of knowledge article 8

Blessed morning everyone and welcome to yet another installment of the Nuggets of knowledge series here at metanoiameans.com! Today, I will be taking a less academic approach to this little nugget of knowledge. today’s topic is our attitude and how it can affect us and our faith in Christ.

I’m sure many of you have heard phrases like “glass half full” or “glass half empty”. Phrases like these are most often used to represent a person’s general view of the world as a whole. With that, I ask you a question. What if those phrases do more than just denote your general view and or mood but they also have the potential to influence them? there are actually scientific theories that say that that actually happens. They are called cognitive appraisal and attributional style. Now, I know I said that this article would be less academic than the previous ones but we still need to define these terms, cognitive appraisal and attributional style.

Cognitive Appraisal:

This theory suggests that thinking and interpreting events (your “view of the world”) precedes emotional responses. According to the University of West Alabama Online, a person experiences a stimulus, thinks about it, and then simultaneously experiences a physiological response and the emotion.

Attributional Style:

This refers to the way you explain events in your life, which can significantly impact your mood and well-being. As Psych Central explains, when something positive or negative happens, you might ask yourself “Why did this happen to me?” and your answer (attribution) can affect your emotional state.

Both of these things are not only affected by but determined by your perception of the world around you. Your perception plays a HUGE role in your life and has a marked effect on it that most people do not realize. Your perception will determine not only what you think and feel about a situation but also how you act before, during and after it. Your perception is the lens from which you see the world but more importantly it influences and shapes both how you feel about and view God. If you have a negative view of the world around you, a pessimistic understanding of your life and everything in it then you will view God the same way. The same stands true for having a positive view of the world around you and your understanding of your life. I can conform that this is true from my own life and personal experiences.

Before Christ changed my heart through his Holy Spirit, I most certainly had a negative view of the world, everything and everyone in it and of God himself. I had so much hate in my heart for family, friends, acquaintances, strangers and just life in general. There was nothing that I saw in a positive light. Everything as I viewed it was shrouded in this thick depressive negativity that made me dread, avoid and fear most everything. This view spilled over to God, I hated him, I feared him, I wanted nothing to do with him. what made me feel this way though? What darkened my perception in the first place? I will be keeping the details to myself because they are personal and I do not want to glorify darkness by sharing them but suffice it to say that I was dealing with abandonment issues on most fronts of my life and found it extremely hard to trust anyone. I spent more than half of my life ignoring God, attempting to hide from him, running away from him because I had learned to see him just as I saw everyone else at that time in my life, someone who would eventually turn away from me and leave me behind. It took multiple things that were extremely mentally and emotionally destructive to break down my protective barriers that I had built around my heart and my soul. The barriers that were keeping God himself out of my life and keeping me in my empty and godless life. I had to go through many different trying and taxing things before I turned to God myself and begged for him to save me.

What am I trying to show you by telling you all of this? Simply that, we cannot let the tests, trials and tribulations that God allows in our lives darken our perception of the world, our lives or our God. If we do, we are doomed. Darkness blinds, it robs us of our sight. Darkness does not make things clear it makes them impossible to see. Darkness does not show anything but it does hide everything from sight. Our enemy, the enemy of God, satan, the devil himself lives in and thrives on darkness, darkness is his home and where he does all of his evil. So to look at the world through a negative lens is to see it as the devil does. To see things as the devil does will cause you to think and act just as he would. Now, I am not saying that we must look at everything as if it is full of warmth and sunshine but to see darkness in all things isn’t the way to go either.

The view that we all have to adopt is one of trust in God and God alone. He knows all things, sees all things and is all powerful. He is our loving heavenly father and he both knows and wants what is best for us all. He will bring less than favorable things to us that we have to get through but with his help we can and we will make it through all of them. it took me YEARS to figure this out, don’t let it take you the same amount of time or longer. Its simple, God knows better than we do about everything, he knows more than we do about everything, whenever we are able to do anything, its not because of us but because of him. in all things, every moment of every day, we need God and he IS AVAILABLE to us.

Your perception of all that you experience is vital to you, its vital to your faith or lack thereof, it is vital to your understanding of all that is around you. Don’t let the devil darken it instead, let God inform it. The word of God NEVER says that our earthly lives are going to be easy, in fact it says the opposite. Specifically, in John 16:33, Jesus says “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” He tells us this not scare us but to inform us that our lives will not be easy. When he says “take heart, I have overcome the world” he is telling us to not worry, to not despair because he is with us and he will help us overcome the world just as he himself did. He is telling us to rely on him because he is the source of our power, strength, life and knowledge. he is telling us that through him, we can accomplish any and all things that our heavenly father has set before us to accomplish. THAT is what we need to focus on, the light of God, his only begotten son, the light of the world, Jesus Christ. For those of us who follow Lord Jesus, there is no reason why we should have a dark view of the world. Why? Because as scripture says Jesus is the light of the world. Where do we find those comforting words? John 8:12  reads as follows: Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

This entire article is meant to show you all that we as followers of Christ, have a CHOICE in how we see the world.

We can choose to see the world as difficult BUT we have both help and hope in the Lord Jesus OR we can choose to see the world as difficult and hopeless. The fact that we have that choice itself is a gift. Those who don’t have the lord on their side can only truly see the world as dark, difficult and hopeless.

Those who do not have Jesus on their side view the world in various degrees of darkness and follow different godless philosophies. These are the ones I can think of.

Nihilism: rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless

Pessimism: A tendency to see the worst in people, things, or situations.

Cynicism: A belief that people are motivated solely by self-interest and that institutions are corrupt.

Misanthropy: A dislike of humankind.

Negative Core Beliefs: Underlying, deeply held beliefs about oneself, others, and the world that are often negative and rigid.

Cognitive Distortions: Systematic errors in thinking that lead to negative conclusions.

I reiterate that there are many other negative world views, these are just the ones I know of off hand. When we allow the devil to darken our perception of God, life and the world, these thought patterns are what result. More importantly though, prolonged stints of thought in philosophies like these eventually harden our hearts towards our almighty triune God, the source of all love and lasting joy. This will cut us off from him and render us incapable of not only feeling these emotions but also feeling and being in his presence. Negative thoughts like these are just another one of the devil’s favorite poisons, designed to rob us of the eternal life that our heavenly father created for us. They are designed to snatch the promises of God out of our hands, leaving us with nothing.

The gift that God has given us here is the gift of CHOICE; we do not have to live life seeing things tinged with darkness, we do not have to live life feeling and thinking and acting negatively about everything.

I have made the CHOICE to step into God’s light and live both by and within it.

Readers, what choice are you going to make?

mb