Romans 12:2 tells us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, that by testing we may discern what is God’s will. There is so much depth to that statement, and I think that, for me personally, I have only just begun to really scratch the surface of the full meaning of it. One thing I feel the Lord has been teaching me, is that when it comes to the renewal God wants to do in the lives of His followers, quite often it is our own individual mindsets that get in the way of real growth.
Like the Bible describes of the Israelites in Exodus 32, we too are a stubborn people. All of us. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, your ethnicity, what your job is, or how much money you have, we are all stubborn in one way or another, and most especially when it comes to our interactions with other people.
Each and every one of us have grown up looking at life and the people around us through the lenses of our own perceptions. We learn these perceptions from the people we spend the most time with, and over the years we pick up things from other people of influence in our lives until, by the time we are adults, we have our own little “filter” that frames the way we view things. These “filters” become so second nature to us, that most of the time we don’t even realize we’re using them. They have become an integral part of our way of thinking about everything, and especially how we think about and interrelate to other people. As a result, we often judge peoples’ motives and intent, drawing assumptions and conclusions based on very little, if any information, and then we make decisions on how to interact with those people (or groups of people) based on our own perceptions, which many times may have been wrong to begin with.
Here’s an example… let’s say you sent a Facebook message to your friend on Monday morning to invite her to dinner on Wednesday evening. Several hours go by and you receive no response, but it shows you that your message was viewed. You also notice that she made several Facebook posts since then. On Tuesday afternoon you see her at the grocery store from a distance. You smile and wave, and while you feel confident that she must have seen you, she didn’t wave back, and she continued shopping without approaching you to talk. You don’t pursue her either. By Wednesday, you still have not received a response to the dinner invite.
Now it’s time for a little self-reflective honesty…
If this were a real scenario, what conclusion are you likely to have drawn?
If you automatically drew the conclusion that your friend did not want to join you for dinner and that she was trying to avoid you in the store, then you too may be suffering from the limitations of your “filter.”
Now for the information that you didn’t have in the previous example… your friend, who has had a very busy week, didn’t actually see your message. When the Facebook messenger notification popped up, her teenage son was borrowing her phone to make a call because his own phone was dead. While he was on her phone, he saw the message, swiped the notification off, and completely forgot to tell his mother about it when he got off the phone. Then, when she was at the store, she was in a rush to grab a few items before picking up her youngest from school, and while it looked like she was looking your way, she didn’t actually see you at all.
When we don’t question our personal perceptions or filters and allow them free reign to paint how we view people and the world around us, we limit ourselves from fully enjoying the blessing of relationships, and we can even limit the transformation God wants to do in our individual hearts and lives.
Would you join me in the following prayer?
Father, I recognize that you are a relational God, and that the very reason Jesus died for us was to restore our relationship with you. Help me to recognize the personal filters I have developed during my life that inhibit my relationship with you and with other people.
Amen
