Seeing from God's Perspective (Part 1)

As a full-time missionary for the past 18 years, and before that, taking short-term missions trips, I’ve had the privilege of travelling all over the world. I’ve seen firsthand (although not climbed!) many mountain ranges - some of the better known ones being the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies, the East African Highlands, and the Andes. I’ve even seen the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro from the airplane. All have been spectacular sightings that have been kept as snapshots in my memory bank.

I moved from Zimbabwe to Cape Town in 2009. In the suburb I live in, I can walk out my front door and see the ocean and I can walk out my back door and see the mountains. More spectacular sightings. As I’m not so partial to the ocean, I’ve kept it as a spectacular sighting. For some reason, I’ve been drawn to the mountains and haven’t been satisfied leaving them as mere sightings. As intimidating as they are, I’ve wanted to experience them. The only way one can truly experience these mountains is to go through the gruelling process of climbing them! I remember a few years ago doing my first climb with my Swiss friend. I was huffing and puffing all the way up and all the way down and she was like a Swiss mountain goat bounding from one rock to the next! I must admit the exertion required to ascend the mountain overrode the exhilaration of making it to the summit. So much so, I didn’t really take in and enjoy the view from the top. Perhaps it was the pain my muscles underwent the next few days that kept me from pursuing another mountain climb. I decided to keep them as spectacular sightings. When I dug a bit deeper into the “why” I didn’t continue climbing, I would have to confess that I didn’t “feel” like making the effort and expending the energy. It was basically too much trouble. I’d rather just take a walk in the park!

It’s interesting because this mentality proved to be a parallel to the thinking I had about my walk with God. If He had pressed me on an issue in my heart that had been painful to go through, and another one came to the surface, I would shy away from wanting to go through something similar again. And yes, I would much rather take my heart on a walk in the park than taking it through the gruelling process of climbing another mountain. Allowing my heart to stay at ground level kept me from seeing what God wanted me to see from His perspective. As long as I did this, my relationship with God would remain merely as a sighting and not an experience. I’m not sure when the shift in my thinking took place, but I started looking at those mountains differently and wanted to climb them again. This I did both in the physical and in the spiritual. Definitely not an easy feat, but the more I pushed my body and my heart upward and onward, the more I experienced life in Christ as it was meant to be – seeing from His perspective. Now, both in the physical and the spiritual, I am looking for greater challenges and no longer satisfied with a walk in the park. It’s becoming less and less about what I feel like doing from my perspective and more about what I know is the right thing to do from God’s perspective.