Things look bleak when we’re struggling. It’s a lot of mental struggles that burn us out before we know we’re tired. I can remember days when I would get home after work and fall asleep. It wasn’t because I was physically tired, but mentally exhausted.
Those days, all I could see was the struggle I was in and try to see the outcomes I wanted. If I was lucky back then, I would have enough energy to have a conversation or two without feeling like it was a chore.
But that is what it means to be human, currently. Things look bleak when we’re struggling. The pressure of life haunts us even in our sleep at times. All we see is the battle to make it to tomorrow and it is rough going.
But if we examine life carefully, we do have hope. Our lives aren’t hopeless and we are never abandoned. One of God’s promises found in Psalms 91, is that He would be with us and Jesus confirmed it when He was here on earth. “I am with you until the end of the age”, He told the disciples. As we turn to the Lord we discover in His word and in our hearts His Spirit leading us in the way He prescribed for us.
We are also told that God would renew our minds. Most often we go looking for revival in the places we haunt. We spend endless time speaking about revival and forget the one place that has already been revived. Inside us.
When we struggle, things don’t have to look bleak. With our new minds and our new thought process, assuming we as believers have submitted ourselves to Jesus, we can see things differently. According to the fruit the Lord makes grow in our hearts, our outlook during times of trouble can look great. We just need to know what to look for and we need to look with our new Spirit filled eyes.
By believing God, we are renewed in our minds. I used to wonder about that once upon a time, until I understood that we still must live and make choices. When we believe God, we look at what God can do rather than looking at what we cannot do.
Our new eyes are the eyes that examine the word of God to know what the Lord has said. With our new eyes we can see that when times look bleak, when times are tough, we can get through it because the Lord is working out the details.
I know now that my new eyes see the Lord at work in the details of every problem and every outcome is for Him to decide. That helps me to look at things a bit differently. When we can trust in the Lord we approach life a bit different because we know that God works things out for the good of those who trust in Him. We need to believe God and put away all the opinions we’ve heard from the sources we’ve heard them from.
This way we can redefine what we see when we must endure pressure and problems. Life is not meant to be only struggle. We may have problems enough every single day, but our minds and our outlook can be reshaped by the word of God. When we allow the word to reshape our eyes, we see possibilities and opportunities instead of constant problems.
With our new eyes, we can think about things from the perspective of faith in Jesus Christ and put our hands to work on the desired outcome by faith. So, if you want new eyes or a revival, start with you. Your outlook may need some sprucing. With the gardener at work, we can go into the garden and say a few words in truth and trust that the Lord will work out our lives for good.
