Gaining Heaven's Perspective
Sometimes God speaks to me through words. I will hear a word and I know that God is trying to show me something in the meaning of that word. One of the words that God highlighted to me in the last couple of years was ‘fortitude.’ When I heard this first, I had to look up the meaning which is “courageous in the face of adversity.” I was praying for a woman on my online broadcast when it came to me. I kept hearing ‘fortitude’ over and over so I began to declare over her that she would be strong and courageous in the face of life’s challenges.
Recently I started hearing another word. I bought a new shirt a couple of weekends ago and written on it was the word ‘perspective.’ This word in the Oxford dictionary means, “a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.” It is the way we experience things or the way we see them.
When we are standing and looking at the sunset, we see it from the place from which we are standing. Your perspective of it is determined by location. Were you in a car, a Highrise apartment, standing on a mountaintop, or next to the sea. The place from which you stand will determine the way that you saw what you saw. It will affect the way you describe what you saw to those that you will describe it to.
When it comes to emotional issues and situations with other people, we can have a perspective of how our interactions took place. But our perspective may be different than the perspective of those that we were with at the time. You may see things that they didn’t see, or they also might see things you didn’t see. Our perspectives can be different.
Sometimes our perspective can be obscured especially when it comes to our interactions with the people that are in our lives. We can be overly sensitive to certain types of behavior and believe things that are false regarding the interactions that we have.
I felt like the Lord began to call me out on this many years ago. I started to hear him say that “Darren you know sometimes your perspective is the problem and not the situation that you're in.” He began to show me that my emotional baggage sometimes is obscured by how I see and relate with the world around me. The pain that I go through in my life sometimes hinders me from understanding the true nature of my relationships with those I interact with.
We can believe that people do not love us or are trying to hinder us when in fact this is not the truth at all. A spoiled child may believe that his parent does not love him because he did not get the toy that he always wanted. A wife may believe that her husband does not love her or that he is distant because he forgot to kiss her as he left for work through the door.
These are instances where the person’s perspective may or may not be right. Many relationships are affected because of improper perspective. God wants to give us his perspective regarding everything that we encounter in life. I'm convinced that prayer really is trying to get God's perspective on everything that I face in my life. Jeremiah 17:9 says “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” And then the devil comes to obscured truth like he did to eve in the garden of Eden. Evil twists and lies to us so that we get the wrong perspective regarding the things that we are going through in our lives.
Many people will say things like “God is not good because I am going through some difficult challenges in my life, or God must not love me because I am not able to pay my bills or I'm facing a sickness that may result in my death.” This really is a twisted perspective. We need God’s perspective on all that we face to live in peace and with a sound mind.
Last year when I got very sick and when I ended up in the intensive care unit there was a chance that I could have died. The doctors and the nurses that were working with me were very concerned that I would die, and they even spoke to my family about this as a possibility. This was their perspective regarding what I was going through, and if I came into agreement with what they said, it could have affected me very negatively.
However, during that time, I began to worship the Lord and ask him for His perspective regarding what I was going through. I remember hearing His voice in the form of a song. I had been wearing headphones and worshipping in the ICU the entire time I was there. There was a song by Zach Williams and one of the stanzas was this:
In the morning, in the evening, every day and in between
When it’s raining, when it’s pouring, and your grass don’t look so green.
Your world might fall to pieces, but these troubles won’t last.
Just remember brothers and sisters, this too shall pass.
This was like the rhema word by the Holy Spirit that broke the yoke of every false perspective that was spoken over my life. I became stronger in that moment than I had ever been before. I learned not to fear the words of doctors that spoke death and sickness over my life. I may have been sick, but I knew that God saw me healed. My faith rose inside of me, and I got better one day at a time. There were very hard days during that season, but I kept hearing “This too shall pass.”
Psalm 107:20 says, “He sent His word and healed them.” The power of God’s word heals. We need to seek Him until we will find Him and this, we must do with all our heart (Jeremiah 29:13).
I declare over you today that you will receive God's perspective regarding the situations that you are going through. The enemy may try to lie and kill but I be clear that you will receive abundant life from the voice of our God. Even the death of his saints carries no sting. I decree that you will face the giant and you will slay it with the word of God. He will empower you by his word to leap over walls and come against troops. You shall not be defeated when you have the word of the Lord as your sword and your shield.
