Day 21

Perceptions Control Us

And Also our Faith

Roger and Eileen Himes

www.ThePracticalGospel.com

In the gospel, we march to the beat of a different drummer than is commonly found in most of Christianity. Lets see what this means.

In addition to the way we’re often controlled by either faith or fear, as we saw, our perceptions also control us. Few live in actual REALITY. We live by our PERCEPTIONS — of people events, and God. The gospel does give you a good ‘handle’ on living in reality, and not in perceptions, because the gospel is the power of God. But if we don’t live in gospel truth, we rely on human perceptions!

If you perceive something is good, rewarding, pleasurable, loving, appreciative, easy, etc., you are drawn to it. You approach it. Thus, faith is generated by positive perception. But if you perceive a person or thing is a risk, a danger, angry, difficult, or painful, you will avoid it. Thus, fear is also generated by perception. Perceptions control us. An illustration is the boss calling an employee into his office. What goes through the mind of the employee? Does he think, ‘the boss wants to give me a raise’? Or does he think, ‘Oh, oh, what have I done’?

Most things in life are a matter of perception.
How we are trained to think produces perception.
If we associate good or bad, or faith or fear to something or someone,
it is our perception that governs us.

We do this with everything from relationships,
to dieting, to work, to going to church, — to the gospel.
We are guided and controlled by perceptions — not by reality.

With dieting, if we approach it in faith, we look at good results that will occur in our health, life, and abilities. But if we avoid it in fear, we look at the bad results of having to give up foods we like, and a lifestyle we enjoy. We see it as pleasure, or pain, as good or as bad.

When boys want to ask a girl for a date, they are torn between wanting to approach her and avoid her. They want to approach her because they like her, and think a date would be fun and pleasurable. A romance might even develop. On the other hand they want to avoid her, thinking about rejection, or that the date wouldn’t go well, or that they didn’t have much money, or they aren’t good looking enough.

I recall counseling a boy who was really down on his dad. His dad was always angry at him, or at least dissatisfied with him. His dad blew him off, talked down on him and ridiculed him. As a counselor, I wanted to help him perceive his dad in a good light, and to remember good things he’d done for him, or that they had done together.

Another guy I counseled wasn’t sure if he could forgive his wife for committing adultery on him. He was considering divorce. I was able to draw out of him how good, positive, pleasurable, and rewarding his 17 years of marriage had been. I was able to help change his perception of his wife. I got him to focus on the big picture, not one act of adultery.

Whether we perceive things through the eyes of faith, or the eyes of fear controls us. We are often dominated by our perceptions. We associate good and bad — faith and fear — in our minds, and we form our perceptions of life. Then we take action on them, or avoid taking action, based on our perceptions. But perceptions precede action. Perceptions rally us, or cause us to retire from any situation.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #41

We’re often dyslexic the way we see life. We don’t focus on the good, but on the bad. We see things basackwards. We don’t perceive things in the order of good then bad. We see things as bad, then good. We don’t live in faith, but in fear. We do not live life in reality, but perception. We often let perceptions to govern, not the reality of truth.

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Here’s a personal example of something hurtful in my life. Eileen and I were in Fiji on a Christian mission with both adults, and some young people. I really connected well with the young people. We hung out, played guitar and sang, and just talked. I got very close to one guy, and one girl especially. Suddenly, the girl must have thought I was trying to come on to her or something. She was intimidated by me, evidently sexually. I never got all the facts because she refused to talk to me. She accused me of saying something improper to her. I was shocked. I’d done nothing inappropriate at all. I hadn’t even THOUGHT of doing anything inappropriate. I was her grand-dad’s age.

I don’t know what prompted it. I asked her to talk about it and she refused. I emailed her more than once after we got back to the USA. She refused to answer. I didn’t know if, in the past, she’d been molested, or if she was sexually active, or just inventive in her imagination.

But her PERCEPTION of me changed— in the blink of an eye! She didn’t ask one question! She wouldn't talk! She just accused me!

Even though I don’t know what it was, I said something to cause her perception of me to change. It wasn’t REALITY. I didn’t do — or even intend anything she thought or perceived. But perception governed. This really affected me. It hurt a lot. She’d been very special to me, and I cared a lot about her. I pondered this a long time. My perception changed too: it became bad, both about HER, and about ME.

I later spoke with a good pastor friend. I told him the story, and what he said helped my PERCEPTION. I was harboring a lot of guilt, not even sure what I was guilty of. He said, “Let me see if I have this right: you didn’t DO anything, but something you SAID offended her? She did not confront you as Matthew 18 says she should do, right? She refused to talk to you in Fiji, so you don’t know the facts for sure, right? She would not even respond to your email requesting some type reconciliation.”

I agreed this was right. He said, “And YOU feel guilty? Come on, you’re a lawyer. Is this the way things should work, legally or spiritually? Aren’t you being spiritually dyslexic? You’re 65 years old, and she’s 19, and she’s sexually intimidated by you, even though you did nothing improper? (He laughed and then continued): What I see is if a 19 year old girl perceives a 65 year old man as a sexual threat, she really gave you a back-handed compliment! Surely, there was something wrong on your end, but there was something wrong on her end too.”

She had been controlled by her perception of me, and then I was controlled by a bad perception of her. Her perceptions caused negative assumptions, and then avoidance. Jim changed my perception. We should get the facts, and not live life in perception (Matthew 18:15-17).

The situation was bad enough in itself. It caused a lot of hurt in me. I’m not sure about her because I never talked with her again. But my wrong perceptions, of both her and me, only caused me hurt and pain. She didn’t know better. I knew better. Yet we both fell into the trap.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #42

The gospel is all about trying to get people to change the way they think and live — from perception to reality.

I am on a crusade to see this happen. Paul calls this transforming our thoughts by the renewal of our minds. Otherwise, we live dyslexic lives, spiritually speaking. We get things out of order, and put bad things first, before good things — fear before faith. We must believe, receive and live the gospel truth. We must live in faith, and not in fear.

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Our reaction to people, problems, trying relationships, finances, and even churches would change drastically if we would live gospel truth. This whole 40 Day Fast is about living gospel truth.

See this difference: instructors in Christ preach true things; fathers of the gospel impart God’s truth! What 10,000 instructors in Christ preach is often true. They preach good, workable principles: A + B =C, or 1 + 1 =2.
But they do not usually preach gospel truth.

Everything in the Bible is true. Instructors get ‘do-do exhortations’ from the Bible. But although everything in the Bible is true, all things we find there are not TRUTH. Truth is reality. It is the way GOD sees things, and thus the way they ARE. All things that we read in the Bible are not truth, although all things are true.

Let’s take past experiences for example. Any experience we have had is true in our lives — but it is not truth as to the way we should live life now. Paul says to ‘forget what lies behind.’ Yet, we know we don’t forget things — especially BAD things that happen to us. I won’t forget my ordeal in Fiji. So, what does it mean to ‘forget’? One meaning of it is, ‘to superimpose something new over the old thing.’ It says to superimpose good over bad, pleasure over pain, or faith over fear. One idea was to superimpose Jesus into any past experience. After all, the Holy Spirit is omnipresent and eternal.

We use our minds negatively. We re-write what happened to us, embellish it, and often make it worse than it was. Instead, let your mind to be transformed by the TRUTH of the gospel. The gospel is Jesus himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” When we live in gospel truth, perception plays much LESS of a part! We allow gospel truth to invade bad life experiences that all of us have.

One wrong perception we have, if we listen to Instructors in Christ, is that we can get to a point where we will no longer have problems in our lives. Their message is they will eventually get you the right formula to overcome all bad things in life. This is not true! Jesus promised we would have problems (John 16:33), and he promised we would be offended by others (Luke 18:1).

Problems and people dominate life. “Life is just one damn thing after another, and then you die.” The only people who don’t have problems are in cemeteries. Life is not about problems. Counselors most often focus on helping you solve and overcome problems. They focus on events in your life. This is somewhat helpful, but the truth is we will have people and problems all the days of our lives.

We must remember that life is a journey. We should even consider PRAYING for problems and problem people. Why pray for them? If they are going to come anyway, trust God to bring the BEST ones. Regardless, we should allow our journey in the process of the gospel to impact our earthly life — not allow our earthly life to impact us so severely.

We tend to move on things in life outside us that we perceive to be true, we try to change them. We try to impact life to make it different. At the same time, if we live in the process of the gospel, gospel truth moves on us — it impacts us and changes us from the inside out. The two have different outcomes. In the gospel, we deal with God’s reality. The other way deals with events in life — usually guided by our perceptions.

Living in gospel truth does not change the bad things that happen to us — or bad things that we do. Things we dislike still happen. We still do dumb things. We still sin. The gospel is not designed to change things that happen in our lives. But it changes US for the better. This is exactly what God has designed it to do.

As we’ve seen, Jesus came to create a race of people who, when they sinned, they knew they were not held liable for their sin, and that God still loved them like crazy. This empowers us beyond our wildest dreams. This is the truth the gospel reveals to us. This is the truth we are to allow to transform our minds.