Which lens are you using?

John Gray wrote a book, ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus’, referring to the psychological difference between the genders. And having done a little counseling psychology myself, I tend to agree with some of the things in his book (well, up to what I’ve read so far). For instance how men and women interpret certain issues. An example is; men’s complaint that if they offer solutions to problems that women bring up in conversation, the women are not necessarily interested in solving those problems, but want mainly to talk about them. Or when men think they need to do one Big thing for the woman and not do much else, assuming the woman will be satisfied with that, and will give him kudos; instead the woman would rather have many little things done for her on a regular basis, because women like to think their men are thinking of them and care for them more constantly. There are many other examples of how differently men and women process things and I also tend to think that our thought patterns are also influenced by our upbringing and environments we’ve been in, in our different stages of growth. Enough about that, my blog is not about relationships and the disparity between how men and women think. But if you’d like to know more on relationships, and how to work through the different thought processing, I’d recommend messages such as ‘Laugh your way to a better marriage’ by Mark Gungor or ‘Defining the Relationship’ by Danny Silk; or you could also read books like ‘Boundaries, Boundaries in dating or Boundaries in marriage’ by Dr Henry cloud. (Well just to mention but a few)

That said, the awesome man in my life (who chooses to remain a mystery to y’all) and I had a misunderstanding last week as we were chatting on phone. I was typing one thing, he was responding to something else, to a point we both got frustrated, since we never seemed to be on the same page. It is at this point I was convinced that my man really was from Mars! J J We therefore decided to meet face to face and dissect the issue until we identified the root of where the disagreement was coming from. After a long discussion of almost getting nowhere, we finally nailed the issue, which ended up being a trivial thing that would have been dealt with, without sparking misunderstanding and discord. I was the one with the issue, which I’d failed to properly communicate, hence my beloved didn’t get why I was upset with him and I didn’t get why he was upset with me. We then agreed on how to deal with such an occurrence in the future, for we’ll not always be on the same page in our thinking process and interpretation of different things. By the time we were going our separate ways we were of like mind and I was very apologetic for causing the discord. I thank God for the patience He's given this man of God!
(This not being the first time I’ve caused the discord)

I Love you babe!

Have you been in a season where you are talking to God about one thing but then His response is something that is unrelated to what you're saying to a point it gets frustrating? You tell him about a financial breakthrough, He says it’s your season for marriage or tells you of a person you need to reconcile with; you bring to him a communication issue you're facing at home, he's telling you to start a business, you’re asking Him on ideas for your presentation, He’s asking you to buy a gift for someone etc and it gets so frustrating you feel like God is out to torture you by purposely refusing to respond to what you're talking to Him about.

On Thursday during the home fellowship, Pastor Erick Mwangi said something profound. I can’t remember the exact words he used, so allow me to paraphrase. He said, “Spending time in prayer is awesome however we should be careful that we don't pray amiss. The only way we can ensure we don’t pray amiss is by knowing what the will of God is, so we can pray in line with that. This will ensure we're on the same page with God. So we should not only know how to pray, but how to pray accurately” Meaning your conversations with God will be based on the same topic of discussion, since you’re in tune with His heart and mind.

I remember when we were small children, there used to be these candy/sweets that were wrapped in coloured transparent nylon paper. We'd look through the papers and get excited at how everything we looked at through them, conformed to the colour of paper we were looking through. Our world would turn blue, yellow, red etc. depending on the colour of paper we were looking through. Unless two people had the same colour of paper, their view of the world would be different; one would be seeing a blue world while the other a red one. Like what happened to my boo and I.

How you view life depends on the lens you are looking through. Through intimacy with God, we come to a place where we view everything through His lens. It is through His lens that we see the reality of our identity in Him (and hence stop striving to be anything other than what He created us to be), it is through His lens that we're able to see others as God sees them (and hence value each person equally), it is through these lens that we're able to accurately interpret situations/circumstances and see their solutions, discern different seasons in order to adjust accordingly. My beloved and I made up our minds to consciously view everything through the God lens; hence we’ll be able to accurately interpret different issues that we’ll tend to have different views about.

In Rom 12 the bible warns us about conforming to the world's lens - the world here refers to anything that is not in line with God: traditions, societal demands, demands from family and friends etc. Then it goes on to tell us how we can know the perfect will of God - which is, by renewing our minds. (So that we're always on the same page with God, and avoid praying amiss) and we can view the world accurately through the God lens.

Dr. Mark Chironna says “Your words are affected by the lens you look through…” And so are your actions influenced by this lens. If you’re not aware of which lens you’re looking through, take note of your thoughts, speech and actions.

We need to make up our minds about which lens we’ll view life through. What will it be; the God lens, defeat lens, inferiority complex lens, pride of life lens, revenge lens, victim mentality lens, lust lens, status quo lens…..???????

Now you know why you've been feeling like God's been acting like a complete snob. Check your lens!