Righting My Skewed Perspective

Sometimes my perspective gets skewed. It happened this week as I’ve tried to work writing around baseball games that get rained out and moved to fields two hours from town, track meets that require overnight stays, day-long shopping trips that prove unproductive, and a husband clomping around in a boot to hopefully stave off further damage to an Achilles tendon.

I’ve wanted to pull my hair out, to run screaming into the night or even just throw myself on the floor and pitch a fit. After all, writing is what the Lord has called me to do. It is my worship. Instead, I sat down with my journal, ready to delve into the Word of God, knowing my desperation for Him in that moment.

I tend to read through Scripture from beginning to end but on no set schedule, just day to day from where I ended the day before to where I feel satisfied on this day. Sometimes that is a few verses, sometimes a few chapters. So feeling completely overwhelmed, I opened to my place marker. Genesis 22 greeted me at the top of the page—along with a handwritten caption for the chapter: The Lord Will Provide.

I read on with a different perspective than before, seeing Abraham’s long waited for child as my own long waited for book contract. Abraham loved Isaac—the first use of that word in the Bible—yet God sends them out to worship, also the first use of that word, with Isaac as the sacrifice. Maybe Abraham’s perspective got skewed in his joy over the child. Maybe instead of worshipping God because of Isaac, maybe he’d come to regard Isaac as of greater consequence to his heart than God. Whatever the case, Abraham obeyed (also the first use!) and God rewarded him for his obedience.

Abraham set out with all the tools required for him to offer a burnt offering to the Lord: the wood, the fire and the knife—even the sacrifice. Yet he tells Isaac on their journey, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering.” And suddenly it occurred to me that God still proves Himself by providing the “meat” of our worship. That part isn't up to me. In the words of a Matt Redman worship song “We have nothing to give that didn’t first come from Your hand. We have nothing to offer You that You did not provide.”

So today I’m choosing to trust God to provide the “meat” for my worship of Him through my writing. I’ll gather my tools, go on the journey, trust Him to provide when and what He desires. And I’ll believe that whatever ends up on the alter of my heart will be His doing and bring the most glory to His name. I want to love and worship God, not the thing He’s given me to offer up as worship.

Have you noticed your perspective skewed in any area of your life lately? How did God reveal it to you? How did you right it?