With all the other activities going
on I never got to this blog entry on time. I have one more diagram from lesson
one I would like to show.
We know that we are going to
experience trials and that they are going to be painful. We also know that with
a right relationship with God we can experience joy in our lives regardless of
what we are going through. Since joy is a characteristic of God’s love (Galatians
5:22) it is not determined by external events.
Consider the red crossbar. It is our
choice as to where it is positioned. We can position it at the bottom and focus
on our trials and experience pain or we can position the crossbar at the top
and focus on God and experience joy. For most the crossbar is probably
somewhere in between and is probably not fixed in position but may tend to move
as our focus drifts. Peter’s walk on water was an example of focus. As long as
his focus was on Jesus, water was a good surface to walk on, but when his focus
turned to the storm, the water was not so firm under his feet.
This diagram became real to me one
day when I was having a very painful medical procedure done. The doctor asked
his nurse to hold my hand to help get me through the pain. I quickly learned
that when I focused on her and talked with her I felt no pain, but when I
thought about the doctor cutting a piece of bone out of my hip the pain was
almost more than I could stand. I very quickly learned the importance of
staying focused on the nurse and thus on God in my diagram during times of
trial.
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