Romans 11:33-36  

“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counsellor? … For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”

Have you ever wished you could see things the way God sees them? Maybe you’ve found yourself in a situation where, if only you had known God’s mind, you might have avoided a world of trouble. Maybe you’re there right now—wondering why God didn’t tell you, or if He tried and you missed it. If you’re honest, you might admit: “I don’t know.” And that’s okay. But perhaps there’s more for us to learn—something that could change not just how we see our past, but how we walk into the future.

The Problem of Perspective

Everyone has a perspective. It’s how we look at any given thing. But nobody has God’s full perspective. At best, we get a glimpse—a little piece that God, in God’s mercy, chooses to reveal. We can’t know the future by speculation, only by revelation. And even then, knowing a little doesn’t mean we know the whole will of God.

We live in a world—and often, a church—that is at odds with itself. Why? Because we all hold tightly to our own perspectives, often out of ignorance. We hurt each other and ourselves because we mistake our way of thinking for God’s. But God’s ways are higher. Our perspective is shaped by time and place, but God exists outside of both.

Time Changes Us

1 Corinthians 13:11 

“When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”

Paul reminds us that our perspective is meant to evolve as we grow. The tragedy is when we cling to childish thinking, when we solidify our thoughts and refuse to see things anew. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness, not because God failed them, but because they couldn’t change their perspective. They saw themselves as grasshoppers, forgetting that God was with them.

The older we get, the more tempting it is to live in the “good old days,” to freeze our perspective and resist the new thing God is doing. But God calls us to a higher view, to see beyond the container to the content, to move from speculation to revelation.

Eternal Perspective

God’s perspective isn’t just higher—it’s outside of time altogether. God created time; He isn’t bound by it. For us, the eternal seems like a long, unending stretch, but for God, it’s a different dimension. He sees the end from the beginning—indeed, He sees all at once, more than that, he is in the past, in the future, and present all at once as not in “time”..

Psalm 46:10

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

To be still is to step out of our frantic, time-bound perspective and join God in God’s. To see, even for a moment, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God sees. Moses spent forty days on the mountain and came down with a face shining from the encounter. It wasn’t the memory that changed him—it was the happening, the encounter with the eternal.

Touched by Eternity

When eternity breaks in, it changes us. We remember the moment, but it’s the encounter that transforms. The church is kept alive not by memories of past revivals, but by fresh encounters with the living God. When the memory fades, so does the vitality. But when the happening is renewed, so is the church.

We need to hunger for God’s presence, that is, to live and be in God’s presence, not chase it, but be within it, to remove the veils we place over ourselves, and to let God change us from glory to glory. As Paul writes in Romans 8:29, we are “predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son”—to be shaped by God’s perspective, not our own.

Learning to Listen

Consider the narrative around Samuel, the boy who slept near the ark before he even knew God’s voice. God called, and Samuel thought it was Eli. How many times do we mistake God’s voice for something else, or someone else? Samuel learned to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” He had the courage to hear—and to speak—the hard truth, because eternity had touched him.

God has already seen your future. He’s not trying to be hard on you; He’s trying to get you on the right path. The hardest lesson? We can’t change anyone—not even ourselves—apart from God’s revelation. But one glimpse of the eternal can change everything.

Will You Let Go?

The challenge for each of us is this: Are we willing to let go of our imperfect, sometimes destructive perspectives and embrace what God is saying? Are we willing to be changed by the happening, not just the memory? Are we willing to be vessels of God’s voice, like Samuel, even when it’s hard?

Eternity has broken in on you. A happening has captured you. Now, it requires courage. Will you let God change your perspective—about God, about yourself, about others? Will you let eternity shape your now?

Prayer

Lord, lift my eyes to see as You see. Give me the courage to lay down my old perspectives and embrace Your eternal truth. Let me be changed by Your presence, and let that change flow into the world around me. Amen.

Reflection:   Where is God inviting you to a higher perspective today? What “happening” with the eternal has marked your life, and how is He calling you to respond?

Who would have considered an unsightly backwater group of young men changing the world? Not only a backwater, but also young, probably teenagers, entrusted with shaping a future world.  The now and not yet world that had arrived and come into their midst, and is still breaking in.   These teenagers stood at a crossroads of time, who sometimes understood, although not accurately, that the coming world was to overthrow the suppressors’ force.     They stood occupied, living under the heel of the mightiest military force in history—the all-conquering Roman Empire. 

This Message of Jesus turned the whole world upside down, or better, the right way up These disciples were accused of doing that very thing.  The Jesus-type world confronted a hierarchical world, a top-down oppressive world with another way of life.   A world where all people were dominated by another, with a world that emptied itself for each other.   Father, Son and Holy Spirit world where each one raised the other and emptied for each other, being initiated by sacrificial giving wholeheartedly of life to another.  

The early followers were touched, saw with their own eyes, and were overwhelmed by self-giving love and extravagant good deeds that transformed their world.

Today, as we look at our world, we wonder what has changed when the only message Jesus uttered was ‘the Kingdom of God.’   We see the rise of a world where domination is prevalent. In a world with over 2 billion Christians, we ask where our impact has gone in terms of transformational and self-emptying expression.    It seems that Christendom has joined the world of hierarchical domination and abuse, of course, not everywhere, but often the case; perhaps this is a case of self-preservation.  

I understood just as Christ was the ‘’exact representation”, “the explanation” of Father, Son and Holy Spirit relationship that we as the church is to continue with that very representation of God.    Perhaps we have forgotten and joined in church building rather than the enlargement of the Kingdom of God.  

Having been living by the gospel for 40 years, I agonise over this and consider the dilemma in my mind.

There are so many excellent people and ecclesial expressions around us; however, I must say that, considering the many good congregations and sincere believers, something appears to be amiss.   Should we simply continue with the same old ways, we will not have a lasting impact on our generation.   

As I read the scripture and consider the Message of Jesus, I ask myself, have we seen the message being obscured, with us settling for a gospel centred on salvation and the church, rather than the Kingdom?    We have not grasped that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a goal of restoration until Christ fills all in all, when we will finally see God’s ultimate intention arriving in creation, with both people and creation transformed, people matured in Christ and creation set free by the people of God.  

My invitation is this: to join the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their ongoing work of restoration. This is a call to participation—to bring the promises of God spoken through the prophets to life in our world today.

The Kingdom has come. It is here, and it is still coming. It breaks in wherever people embody the self-emptying love of Christ. It advances when believers live not for themselves but for the renewal of all things, both in the earth, creation and in the lives of people.

Will you join in this divine partnership? Will you live as a citizen of the Kingdom that has already come and is still coming?

Let us rise again as those first disciples did—ordinary people carrying an extraordinary message—that the world may once again be turned the right way up.