What do You See?

“The one who seeks good finds delight, but the student of evil becomes evil” (Proverbs 11:27).

If you’re always looking for what’s wrong, guess what? You’ll find something wrong. That kind of mindset is exhausting, constantly creating and maintaining systems to manage life, as it tries to control everything you judge as righteous and unrighteous.

Maybe you have a stronger will than me, but I haven’t experienced unfairness, injustice, corruption, or evil I’ve been able to stop with logic. I can’t even fully control my own experiences with frustration, stress, and anxiety solely with my mind. Trying to figure out and resolve every situation, much less control how others react to them, usually makes things so much worse. Scratch that. It’s always worse.

You can’t avoid what’s difficult, or ignore evil, especially when they’re in your path. But there’s a better way to deal with them than spending your life looking out for them. Every difficult circumstance can be displaced by God’s love, joy, peace, kindness, hope, grace, and truth. That’s not oversimplifying adversity, it’s disempowering it.

It’s living the fruit of his Spirit, a lifestyle of “looking for what’s true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable” (Phil. 4:8). It’s “focusing on Jesus, the author and completer of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). It’s “loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). It’s a mindset that recognizes and hosts God’s presence, and creates an “on earth as it is in heaven” atmosphere of love, grace, healing, peace, justice, honor, wisdom, and spiritual awakening around you.

God hasn’t been teaching you how to barely survive your circumstances. He hasn’t been equipping you with systems to control your life, or empowering you to condemn the world. He’s been training you to see, live in, and overflow his goodness. He’s been equipping and empowering you to release your peace, your nothing–missing–nothing–broken state of wholeness in Christ, into every situation and completely change its atmosphere.