Spiritual Survival Guide
1: Starting Well: Surviving Spiritually on the Inside
In one group of heart bypass patients, 80 percent changed their life- style—for good. Researchers discovered four key motivators and behav- iors that worked for them. They actually echo what the Bible has been suggesting and inviting us to all along. Put on new lenses. Have you ever worn somebody else’s glasses— especially if the lenses were thick? If so, you know how distorted, weird, and crooked things look. You feel that the world itself doesn’t look quite right. Sometimes it can make your head hurt. You feel unbalanced and dizzy. The only cure, the only sensible thing to do, is to take the lenses off. And the reason is simple—they’re not meant for us. Leave them on long enough, though, and even though they don’t help you see, you get used to having them on. The same thing happens spiritually. We borrowed lenses from the dysfunc- tional world around us—the streets, drug users, screwed up people in our lives. Somehow, along the way, we got used to wearing them, even though they distorted our view of reality and made us unbalanced. After a while we forgot that we were even wearing them. We adjusted ourselves to a messed- up view of reality. Look around and see where those lenses have gotten you. The only cure, the only sensible thing to do is to take them off. And the reason is simple—they’re not meant for us.
When God gives you new lenses, he also gives you new “frames.” You can actually stop seeing your life through the frames of regret, blame, mere survival, despair, or a cruel game. Instead of all those, God helps you see life as Jesus sees it. For example, you can actually “re-frame” this coming year as 525,600 minutes to be lived abundantly, as God’s gift—as a relationship, with joy, and on purpose. Imagine that over the next year, whatever hap- pens with your case, or on the deck, or with your family or with your health—come what may—your trust in God wouldn’t waver, but would grow. Imagine being at peace whatever happens, because you would be better grounded in prayer. Imagine picturing what life would be like later this year once Jesus has had his hands on you for a while. If we’re really going to trust Jesus and let him give us new prescription lenses, then we’re going to have to remember this, too: Radical change is easiest. This is one of the great paradoxes (two things that don’t seem to fit together, but actually do) of abundant living. Here’s what usually happens. Most of us try tinkering with our life. We try out small and medium-sized changes for a while. But those small changes usually tend to just make us feel deprived. We give something up, but the payoff seems too small. And so we get discouraged. Pretty soon we start thinking, Why am I even bothering? Not even this one little change is making any real difference! And so we stop. When we try to tinker with all those entrenched habits and addictions of ours, it’s even worse. Anybody who’s ever spent any time around addiction soon discovers that our attempts to “manage our addiction” are doomed to failure. It’s a cruel myth that only sinks us deeper into slavery and makes us despair of ever changing at all. The truth is, we need radical change. We need to let God get his hands on us. On the other hand, if radical change is ever going to happen, then we
The good news is, God has an- other set of lenses specially made for you. Lenses to let you see past the lies and distortion. Lenses to keep Jesus’ way of living in front of your eyes. Lenses to keep him in focus, to let him model for us what true living is. Lenses to see your future in his loving and capable hands.
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