Episode 54: God’s Perspective: How to Get It, Live It, and Value What Matters

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: That another beautiful almost fall morning.

John McLarty: It’s been great weather. Yeah. Some good Bible discussion out on the front porch, didn’t we?

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. Trying to get God’s perspective. It’s such a simple thing, but it’s, I think for most of my Christian life has been, just I’ve been ignorant of the thought that I need to have God’s perspective on every area of my life.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: I think it’s easy for us to think about God’s perspective being just relegated to when we are engaged in some kind of intentional ministry as opposed to having God’s perspective in every corner of our life.

John McLarty: Or we just get it Sunday morning when we go to church.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. Yeah. And so we’re gonna talk about this has been a game changer when the Lord exposed me to a couple of different messages by a couple of different men in our church. He built this this it’s a three part devotional series in ’25, but I just was so I was so bowled over by how this has been a conversation changer to have God’s perspective in my life.

John McLarty: Message is from brother Mitch, Carrie Mitchell and Peter Kilbuch.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. And I remember those. Yeah. And they were like a week apart or maybe two weeks apart. And the way the Lord, he’s just so good to put things like this, bring them to mind and then take them and shoot them out to a whole different audience, which is kind of cool.

We’re gonna next week, we’re gonna talk about our it’s gonna be a one anniversary.

John McLarty: That’s amazing.

Kimberly Faith: And we’re gonna talk about some of the

John McLarty: One year anniversary for these podcasts.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yeah. Sorry, thanks for clarifying that. And it’s mind blowing, but it’s kind of like God has taken this is the podcast eve to the one year anniversary.

John McLarty: It’s exciting. But interesting.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And shown us how his perspective has guided even this podcast, But you when I think about, you know, we think about perspective and it shapes, it’s our view, it’s worldview and it’s shaped by our emotion, our experience, our environment, our tribe, even our limitations. And it even convinces us at times that the path of sin, which is the path of slavery is our best life. And God’s perspective frees us, gives us wisdom. And we’re gonna talk about some of the benefits.

We’re gonna talk about how we get it, what the benefits are and how it changes what we value.

John McLarty: I just thought of one example, Kim, I’ll throw out for our listeners of just how in general perspective can be a game changer. I think a lot of if something troubling has happened in my life, just, you know, and we kind of joke about, and it’s not a joke, but first world problems.

Kimberly Faith: So,

John McLarty: you know, maybe somebody’s twisted their ankle or their engine blows up.

Kimberly Faith: Wait. Maybe you have to shop for jeans.

John McLarty: Or you have to go shop for jeans, and there’s so many varieties.

Kimberly Faith: And you said it was a terrible experience.

John McLarty: It was a terrible experience. Yeah. There’s too many too many varieties of jeans to choose. But, yeah, I just perspective, if I’m troubled or worried about some, you know, whatever, you know, some household issue, the dishwasher doesn’t work. Right.

And I can immediately change my perspective by thinking about, I’m not in a North Korean prison camp.

Kimberly Faith: Or you can and that’s so true. Or you can even rather than thinking that things are not happening to you right now, you can think maybe God has an opportunity for me planned to minister to the dishwasher repairman.

John McLarty: Just a thought. Yeah. Can. Yeah. And I am immediate well.

Like, what are you doing? Right. Being troubled about a dishwasher. Right. When there are people in, you know, just country after country.

And I’ve studied Cambodia after Vietnam fell.

Kimberly Faith: It’s just

John McLarty: the horrors that humans can experience. And I’m going like, You big sissy, your mind right.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And it’s almost like the comparison to people who have real problems kind of wakes us up.

John McLarty: Wakes us up.

Kimberly Faith: And then having God’s perspective makes us alive. Right. You know, and makes us live.

John McLarty: So that’s just an example. Yeah. We can get a different perspective. God’s perspective is, oh my, much

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: I’m just using the example in my life that I can immediately change my thinking. Right. And go from troubled to rejoicing. And my guess is I have a dishwasher I to can fix it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. No. And that kind of is good lead into kind of the in my mind, the key verse, the key set of verses that give us so much promise and hope about what we can have in Christ. And that is Isaiah 50 five:eight-nine, where God says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways or your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts and your thoughts.

Here’s the God who created everything, including us, who’s saying, guess what? You need to think like I do if you really wanna think in a way that is wise and wonderful. And He gives us the opportunity to do that. That’s a staggering thought. But the first issue we wanna address is how do we get that?

How are we able to have God’s perspective to the degree that our small human minds can have that perspective? And it kind of goes back to, it’s kind of funny, kind of goes back to what we talked about in episode, what was it, 44 or 45, where we talked about the three levels of knowing God.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Right? And so first thing is we need to be-

John McLarty: To know God. Be born again. Right. We’ll- Know Him through salvation.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Because when we’re born again, our soul and spirit are enabled the ability to communicate with God who is a spirit. We can’t have the thoughts of a spiritual God unless we are spiritually alive.

John McLarty: Yeah, that gives us the mind of Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Right. You brought up the dishwasher thing. I think that’s a really valid point. And I think that if we’re looking at our problems, because we’re gonna have them, always gonna have problems through our human lens, then we are really restricting our view of the usefulness of that pain, suffering problem to our present and non eternal options. But when we And so therefore what we have is every problem is gonna be clouded by fear, by pride, by dissatisfaction, by just the natural outflow of things that are painful, right?

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: But if our soul is born again, we talked about, we had a couple of different podcasts about living abundantly. And I think podcast two was how to have the abundant life. And then we also had a podcast on spiritual prosperity, And by training our minds to have God’s perspective, we shift from living temporally to living under God’s eternal perspective.

John McLarty: Exciting. That we can have God’s perspective because a mind that’s so great and it’s beyond our thoughts, but it is attainable.

Kimberly Faith: It is attainable. Not by

John McLarty: our works of spending years of study in some library, some place, but through His Spirit, through His Word and

Kimberly Faith: through And His you think proportionally, you have an undergraduate degree, I have a law degree. We spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars obtaining those degrees. But let’s say we invested a fraction of that into knowing God and getting His perspective. It’s kind of like we’ve The difference between flying IFR and VFR, you know, if you’re relying on visual flight rules and the clouds come in, you’re lost. But God is like, He turns on that infrared radar and He gives us His navigation tools so that when the clouds roll in, man, we don’t have to worry about the clouds.

We don’t have to worry about the storm because it’s gonna come. But we’re tapped into His, He’s above the clouds.

John McLarty: We actually have His perspective.

Kimberly Faith: We actually have His perspective.

John McLarty: Now we talked in a previous podcast about God, Jesus is the word. So we have the written word, and I have a copy right in front of me. But then when we’re born again, we have the mind of Christ inside of us. So those two are both- They’re connecting. Resources.

And they can connect and we can have the mind of God revealed to us.

Kimberly Faith: It’s kind of like flipping that switch, that electric, we’re connecting. It’s like you’re connecting two things. And I think it comes down to really, after we’re born again, which is the first level, we have to make God’s Word and His spirit, which you were just talking about, our greatest influence. It needs to be the greatest influence in our life. And it only becomes that way if we’re constantly recharging our mind, like Roman says, renewing our mind, transforming our mind, excuse me, by the by transforming yourself by the renewing of your mind.

Right?

John McLarty: I’ve got it right here. Oh, good. Romans twelve:two, And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove that what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Right. And then one of the ways we do that and where you were just alluding to is the word of God.

I mean, we had the mind of Christ in us, but I’m looking at another verse here at Hebrews four twelve. For the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and the marrow. And this is interesting, and the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Kimberly Faith: It’s amazing. It’s kind of like that radar example. If you’re flying VFR, visual flight rules, and the clouds come in and you can switch to IFR so that you’re taking advantage of radar. The clouds don’t matter. They’re not even an obstacle because you can still stay on your flight path.

And I think that kind of is a great example because we’re not expect I’m not You don’t have to ask God, do I go to work in the morning? That’s VFR stuff. It’s when I’m at work, how do I glorify God and live with his perspective with each client that I meet? Now that is IFR work.

John McLarty: And that’s interesting, even the word flying in the clouds, because our minds really are cloudy. Just the human mind. And there’s so many sources of what’s the truth. You get something from the news, something from a friend, something from this source, But God’s word is that source of truth that we can line up to. Get those bearings using your aircraft example.

Kimberly Faith: A 100% because the word exposes the limitation of our own view. The radar exposes the limitation of our eyesight and offers us the lens of truth, purpose, and hope. If I have a client in my office who is just an angry person, and maybe they’re angry at me for and it’s not justified, you know, I don’t have to switch my flight pattern because of their anger. I can, with God’s navigation, I can see them for who He sees them and respond according to how Jesus would have done that. You know?

Either sometimes it’s calling them out and just pointing them to why they’re really angry. Other times I may need to apologize for something, you know, and that’s okay. Either way, I don’t have to change course. The course can still be our purpose, which is to glorify God. And so scripture is so much different than I struggle with this, dad.

I mean, when I’m writing devotionals, always You tend because your mind is cloudy to start putting your own words in there.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And trying to take the place of the Holy Spirit. And it doesn’t work. No. It doesn’t work. It has to be God’s word and his words that come from that.

John McLarty: It’s amazing that God’s word scripture reveals I mean, it’s from the heart and mind of God. And that’s really a resource. You were using the example of going to the university. How many books if you stacked all the books you had to read to graduate from law school, how high would that stack be? Well, the ones I

Kimberly Faith: had read, the ones I actually did read. The ones the

John McLarty: ones you were supposed to read

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: To have full knowledge.

Kimberly Faith: I I imagine that stack would be pretty high.

John McLarty: It’d be like three or four, you know, just to get a degree and to go through college. Three or four stories. Yeah. You’d have a lot of books. Yeah.

And I’m just picking up the bible here. But in this, you know, book that’s maybe two inches, inch and a half high, you have that’s that’s it. It’s all in here.

Kimberly Faith: The wisdom of the ages.

John McLarty: Have God’s mind revealed through this word.

Kimberly Faith: Wisdom of creation. And you think about men created all those books I read in law school, but God created the earth. He created something from nothing. No man’s ever done that. And that’s an infinite wisdom that He’s offering us.

I think about just the real simple scripture out of Proverbs that basically says, if you just trust God, He’ll give you His perspective. He says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not under your own understanding and all your ways, all your ways, office, home, family, friendships, relationships, your bank account, acknowledge him. In all those ways, acknowledge him. In other words, have his perspective. And what is he gonna do? He’s gonna direct your path.

John McLarty: Yeah. It’s like a, and he shall direct that path. It’s like one of these promises.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And then you contrast that with Revelations chapter three, where God is talking to the church at Laodicea, who they because and they believed they were rich, self sufficient, need of nothing. And Jesus said, well, actually actually, my dear brothers and sisters, you’re wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

John McLarty: What a contrast.

Kimberly Faith: What a contrast. And

John McLarty: What they thought they were to what God God viewed them as.

Kimberly Faith: Don’t you think that’s that’s a that’s a condition of a lot of I mean, I can point to my own life and say that that has been a condition of my born again life. In times of my life, there’ve been great deserts where I was living, a born again person living as if I was wretched, I was miserable, I was blind. I was very much exposed to the enemy, because I had wandered back into enemy territory. And that’s, you know, again, that’s kind of going a little further than just, you know, how do we the fact that we can have God’s perspective, how we have it, and it kinda leads us to what are the benefits, right?

John McLarty: Yeah. But before we go there, the idea that we can lose our perspective so fast.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: It’s it’s you might say the way of human God is to lose our perspective.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And I was just thinking of that verse where it says, be still and know that I’m the Lord. So the voice of the Lord, that perspective can be very quiet is through studying his word and the flesh and the world is so dominating. So we can just stub our toe and that changes our perspective. It’s all about our foot or we’ve twisted an ankle. And that’s all our perspective or some are car trouble.

Kimberly Faith: We get focused on our pain instead of who God is. And so, of just to summarize this first, how do we get it? How do we get God’s perspective? It’s actually pretty simple. We have to fill our mind with His Word, not just for knowledge, but with a surrendered heart.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And that’s kind of goes to the level three intimacy with God we talked about in the three levels of knowing God. And then when we are there, when we are committed, not just daily, it has sometimes to be hourly, you stub your toe and something may fly out of your mouth that’s not glorifying to God. And you’ve, in that instant, lost God’s perspective. And it’s not that hard to get it back because God knows you know, your flesh is like Romans chapter seven. That which I would do not want to do, I do. You know?

John McLarty: And I was thinking of the law of entropy. You know? I mean, oatmeal cools down. Everything is you know, our default position as humans

Kimberly Faith: is our flesh.

John McLarty: Because we’re in this body of flesh. Yeah. And it’s like yelling at us.

Kimberly Faith: Screaming. Yeah. From every corner. And that is the daily challenge. You know, when I meet somebody who says, man, I’ve fallen far so far from my relationship with God.

I’m like, do you think God doesn’t know that? Of course he knows that. Do you think you’re suffering alone? You think that you’re the only person? No, every one of us.

I don’t care if you’re Billy Graham’s son or if you’re just the person who just got saved. That is the struggle. That is the wilderness that we’re in. And I think that when we understand that this world is our wilderness, it’s not our home. And someday we’re gonna cross over Jordan.

We don’t have to think about crossing over Jordan right now because we know that’s promised.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: But we can focus on how do we live with God’s perspective here and now. So before we kinda we kinda talked about how we have it. Now let’s just introduce some of these benefits. And this is not an exhaustive list, but I think it’s important to understand these benefits.

John McLarty: And I think that’s a motivation to people. I mean, we’re all kinda like, cool. What’s in it for me?

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.

John McLarty: We had a trainer one time telling us that all humans are tuned into radio station WIFM. What’s in it for me? And really, but that’s valid. Is So people are like, why would I wanna what’s the benefit of doing this discipline or studying God’s perspective so I can live by that perspective? What are the benefits? That’s a great

Kimberly Faith: so glad you brought that up because this also goes back to kind of what we talked about in the prosperity, the spiritual prosperity. When we delight in the Lord, in other words, when we want to surrender to Him because we understand He is the best, right? Then He gives us the desires of our heart because our desires are aligned with His desires. Not because He wants to make us slaves again in our old desires, but because He wants to set in us His desires.

John McLarty: And think about it, there’s this satanic deception that if somebody did dive into God’s perspective and live according to it, oh, then their life’s going to be Miserable. Miserable. Yeah. But that’s so that’s why we look at these benefits. It’s actually the opposite.

Kimberly Faith: And it’s that’s why we have to have God’s perspective. Because if we don’t, then that’s exactly how we’re gonna think that somehow the slavery of sin becomes enticing. It’s kinda like the delusion of flying in the clouds without radar, without, you know, you think this is the right way and you may be going straight for the earth and on a a crash pattern or into a mountain. So let’s just talk about and I’m not representing by any stretch of the imagination, these are this is an exhaustive list because it’s not. But we’ve talked about one about God’s word in Psalms one nineteen.

Mhmm. So first of all, a lot of these verses, you know, they they spring from Psalms one nineteen. If you ever wanna just see the all the benefits of God’s word, I’m pretty sure that if you read Psalms one nineteen, you would get them all. Because it is a it’s all it’s about, is all the benefits of God’s word. Psalm one nineteen.

It’s the longest chapter in the Bible and it’s all about the benefits of God’s word. So what do you think, dad? What do you wanna talk about first on his benefits?

John McLarty: Well, you know, it’s this great Bible verse and then, you know, the song, you know, a lamp into my feet. Your word is a lamp into feet my feet and a light into my path. And what an idea that we can go through this dark, confusing world, trouble thrown at us, you know, people saying this or what’s what’s our next step. And we can God’s word is a lamp into our feet. If you’re lost in a cave Mhmm.

And your lights all went out, you are disoriented. Exactly. And you panic. Yeah. But here, your word is a lamp into my feet. It wants to direct our ways.

Kimberly Faith: You know, that reminds me of the basic, the Bible concept study that you teach and I teach and we’re, you know, constantly just number one concept, the number one principle is, you know, it’s called the poles of influence. I call it, where do you get your truth? You know? And it’s this idea that if your truth is not trustworthy, you’re going to fail. You’re going to be miserable.

You’re going to, you know, if you ignore the law of entropy, you’re gonna live in a delusion, you know? If you ignore the law of gravity, you’re gonna live in a lot of danger. And that’s what the wrong kind of truth does for us. And God’s saying, hey, my word represents my thoughts and my ways, and I’m gonna guide you in a way that’s gonna be so incredibly abundant and satisfying. Pay attention.

John McLarty: And the idea that it’s a lamp. It’s a light. Mhmm. I just had this memory. We recently had a dark, windy, rainy night.

Our lights went out. Right. And we weren’t prepared for it. So we’re stumbling around trying to I thought somewhere in my room, bedroom, there’s a flashlight. Mhmm.

But I wasn’t sure where it was. Right. But once I found it, it was such a relief.

Kimberly Faith: Such a relief.

John McLarty: It’s like everything can work out because I have some light so we can find out where other things are.

Kimberly Faith: And that kind of kind of segues into a second benefit, and that is our anxiety. Know? Right. God’s perspective will guard our mind and our heart because when we know His perspective, then that verse in Philippians chapter six, says, Be anxious for nothing.

John McLarty: And

Kimberly Faith: it talks about giving your requests, all your requests to God, and He’ll give you His peace. The peace that doesn’t even make sense, right? And it says it’s gonna guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus. That’s because when we know God more and more for who He says He is and who He in fact is, and we know that through His Word, right? Then we know we can trust Him.

We can trust His ways even when the world says that doesn’t make sense. In this podcast, we’re talking about our first anniversary. I was told by many Christian friends, you don’t have time to do this. This is going to be a this is a bad idea. But God kept saying, do this, do this.

John McLarty: It’s a big commitment.

Kimberly Faith: It’s a big commitment if you’re gonna do it right. And I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time. I’m sure you don’t either. We can stumble this. But this is an example.

We call it often, you and I, the path of peace. When you’re in God’s perspective, because you’re obeying Him out of a thankful heart, a grateful heart, a heart of love, and you know Him well enough to trust Him, that He tells you, here’s the way, go, go this way. And even when it doesn’t make sense to the even your Christian friends, you don’t lose your peace because it guards your heart and mind.

John McLarty: And it’s such a relief to have that when God just showed you to go ahead and go forward with it. He provides the strength to do it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. All the things that I was thinking about was like, well, who will I interview? What will we say? How will we know? How will we keep enough podcasts going?

You know, all those doubts. It was like, could say to God, look, if this is your thing, then neither your problems. And it’s that everything by prayer and supplication, let your request be made come to God. And what happens? Peace, right?

The peace that defies the naysayers, you know, it rules. So, God’s perspective guards. You want your look, if you’re listening to this podcast and you have a significant level of anxiety, if you’re born again, you don’t have to live that way. Know this, you do not have to live this way.

John McLarty: And humans are really controlled by their anxiety. They’re really

Kimberly Faith: At every age.

John McLarty: Yeah, at every age.

Kimberly Faith: And in every circumstance.

John McLarty: And one of our great motivations to relieve anxiety and spiritual anxiety is relieved by this perspective, God’s perspective.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And he also you mentioned the word strength earlier and he does, he gives us strength. And I love Psalms 1nineteen 50 that says, this is my comfort in my affliction for your word has given me life. And of course, word, we know from reading in the context of the Bible that from John one, that Jesus is the word. And that’s so beautiful.

We don’t even really, we can’t really wrap our minds around what how that the multifaceted perspective of Jesus being the word and it’s written in.

John McLarty: The word within us and the word of God, the written word.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. So the the the cool thing I think, and this is this has been I don’t know if this is this is a strong statement. My experience with God is that my comfort doesn’t come from my circumstances. That’s what happens when you get God’s perspective. My comfort and peace does not come from my circumstances.

It comes from God’s presence. That’s huge.

John McLarty: Then that’s I just go back to that perspective. We can change our we can be in terrible circumstances that we’re thinking is terrible, and then a perspective change can really just take care of that, give us that peace. And it’s power. The guidance.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, it’s It’s think about how powerful it is. You see a person who’s dying of cancer, yet is full of peace. That is a much more That’s a position of much more power than somebody who’s on a beach in Hawaii, who’s feeling peaceful.

John McLarty: And

Kimberly Faith: it’s not powerful to bring glory to that person, it’s powerful to bring glory. They’ve got something I want and that’s Jesus.

John McLarty: Some of the greatest testimony of Christians is in martyrdom. Yeah. They have they have that peace, that strength to go through what they’re going through.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. It’s the it’s the heroic really, it’s kind of the heroic part of it’s the heroism that Jesus gives us because he was our hero. We can live in the same kind of the same kind of heroic life.

John McLarty: You know, here in America, we don’t have that martyrdom and you think, well, we have it so easy, which we do compared not I mean, the martyrs, it’s horrific. But Satan comes up with things that we get troubled. I mean, there’s times in my life where this you know, some terrible thing is happening in the family, and it really robs that perspective, and it’s a struggle to get it back. Yeah. So I never wanna just mitigate or just put a cloud on that Americans really don’t have real problems.

We do because emotional distress can be a problem and just destroy people’s lives. Yeah. I mean, I’ve known people just a tragic event just happens in their family, maybe to a family member, just a sudden unexpected death of a child. Right. And you can see whole whole lives derailed for the rest of their life. Something happened.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.

John McLarty: And they they ended up living this unhappy life.

Kimberly Faith: I think that’s what makes

John McLarty: Miserable, depressed.

Kimberly Faith: I think that’s what makes the Rudy Zavala story so powerful. An earlier podcast, where I got to interview Stephanie Zavala, the mother of the 18 year old young man who died crossing the finish line.

John McLarty: That’s a perfect example. She could have let that destroy her life.

Kimberly Faith: Right. But Rudy’s testimony of salvation was so powerful as a 17 year old that his whole family got saved. And his this again is is the way that God uses affliction for his eternal glory. You know, God’s God’s whole reason for for, you know, he wants to have fellowship with us. Created us for His glory, but He delights in fellowship with us.

And we delight in fellowship with Him. We get to experience more of life like He does. Right. You know, we’ll never become God, of course, but it kinda gives us, I mean, when Psalms 119 says, I rejoice at your word as one who finds great treasure. You know, God’s Word is our love letter, our source of joy for our soul.

So not only does He give us strength, but He gives us His joy, His delight, His love. I think that we have, when we tap into that, there’s nothing like it. I can’t when people say, well, are you ever gonna have a are you ever going to be in another relationship? And because I’ve been by myself for a long time now. I’m like, you know, me and God, we’re really good together.

And it’s all Him, of course, you know? But it’s when and it’s not that I’m not I’m always I’m for marriage, I’m for relationships, but I’m just saying that when you found that, it’s so much better than anything else you have. That’s again, God’s perspective. And when I lose God’s perspective, guess what? I also lose that connection, knowing the love of God, knowing that deep intimacy.

So I think that in addition to strength, He also gives us His joy, His delight, His love. What else kind of strikes you that we get as benefit?

John McLarty: Well, I was just thinking with the joy that we want to have joy and that’s what others need that draws others to see joy in our life even when we’re going through trials. Right. I just would it could be a whole study, but I just read one time the book of Philippians and just it’s rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice and that your joy might be full.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: I just underlined in the book of Philippians every time they use word joy or rejoice. I was just you know, we’ve got a verse here, rejoice that your word is one who finds great treasure. Yeah. But that joy is really something that’s perspective.

Kimberly Faith: It is. That

John McLarty: just God wants us to be full of joy and full of thankfulness.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And joy is satisfaction. Know, joy is not some giddy, silly happiness that fades out.

John McLarty: That’s a deeper yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Not sustainable. When we talk about joy, we are not talking about, you’re excited because you got a new car. That’s a manifestation of joy, but that’s not joy. Joy is this deep seated knowledge and perspective that your life is completely satisfying. And that’s what God’s Word does for us in His perspective, is it doesn’t allow our circumstances to rob us of the present joy.

And that’s so powerful. And it kind of

John McLarty: That gives us freedom. Yes. Freedom to live for God and live in rejoicing, thankfulness. Again, I’m glad you mentioned that. It’s not this giddy, life’s a party.

Life can be rough. Is Life can be Life One of your phrases is life is full of trouble. Yeah. And that’s true, but we can still rejoice because we have the Lord.

Kimberly Faith: Think the life

John McLarty: Because we have discomfort.

Kimberly Faith: The life is full of trouble is definitely something that I try not to say that without also saying that you can either walk through it with God or without Him. Because people I need to tell myself this, not just other people. You can know that life is full of trouble and that can either be greatly distressing or greatly encouraging. You know, when you look at it’s kinda like when you you’re you know, I used to play club, competitive volleyball. And when we knew we were playing a team that was a lot taller than us and maybe better, that had better record than we did, we could look at it with dread or we could say, you know what?

We’re not working today. We’re having a good time. Right. We’re gonna get out there. We know we know we’re team.

We play like a team. We’re gonna give it our best shot, and we’re gonna have fun doing it. And it’s in the battle because the victory is won in the attitude a lot of times.

John McLarty: It’s interesting. It’s a perspective, James. I just had this flash of halftime talks. Yeah. A team just being beat terribly.

What changes at halftime with a good coach? He changes their perspective.

Kimberly Faith: That’s a great point. That’s a great point.

John McLarty: And they go out and they can win the game.

Kimberly Faith: Right. But even if they don’t win, they’ve done it with their best Right. They get their best.

John McLarty: Yeah. That’s a perspective change.

Kimberly Faith: You don’t walk away ashamed. You don’t walk away feeling like, you know, because here, this is the real crux of this and this kind of leads us into, you know, that is playing the game freely, right? That is giving, you mentioned freedom. God’s perspective gives us freedom because when we are walking, we already know we’re free, you know, the game is not gonna change us. The battle is not gonna change our freedom.

Even if we lose a particular battle, we may, you know, pray and pray and pray for somebody to come to know Jesus or for somebody to be healed.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And you know what? They may die without Jesus. That person may die from a disease. Does that mean we’ve lost our freedom? Does that mean we’ve lost our relationship with God, the greatest thing we hold dear?

John McLarty: Or our joy.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. You know, it’s okay to experience the emotion of having that loss of the sorrow and the horror of sin, mourning sin, Jesus talked about, blessed are they that mourn, right? Talking about mourning the effects of sin, not only in our lives, but on the whole culture. But we are not meant to live in mourning. We’re not meant to stay in that negative emotion.

We are meant because that doesn’t glorify God. And the point where we get to stop mourning and begin to start living again for God’s glory, that’s where God’s perspective kicks in and says, here’s it’s time.

John McLarty: And it gives us comfort even in times of disappointment.

Kimberly Faith: Yes, yes, absolutely. So we talked about freedom, right? I mean, Jesus talked about the sun setting us free. In Romans, it talks about you could be slaves of sin.

John McLarty: Slaves of sin.

Kimberly Faith: Or slaves of righteousness. You know? Gosh, you know, would I like to be a slave of all the things that mentioned in Galatians chapter five, or would I be a slave of love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, generals, weakness? Oh, that’s pretty, You know, which one is gonna serve? We talked about what’s in it for me.

What’s gonna serve me, the real me and my soul, it’s gonna be the fruits of righteousness.

John McLarty: We used to think of freedom as hippies to do whatever pops into your brain. Right. And that is a horrible way to live. That’s destructive, selfish, hurts you, hurts others. But this freedom is to do God’s will.

Absolutely. That’s to love others and to seek others’ benefits. And that turns around to benefit us because we have that peace, joy, fulfillment.

Kimberly Faith: Kind of goes back to those, we’re talking about the benefits and we’ve covered a lot of benefits in this podcast up to just now. But also when you think about Lord love, you talk about the hippie free love. The world has crushed this definition of love to make it a very selfish, self serving word. When love in the Bible, the opposite of love in the Bible is selfishness. You know, love is selflessness.

It’s selflessness.

John McLarty: Selflessness.

Kimberly Faith: That’s what Jesus did. That’s what we’re called to do. And when we’re living in real love, then we experience true freedom, you know? We’ve experienced freedom from fear. We experienced freedom from so many anxiety because it’s kinda like you mentioned the example of somebody whose child tragically dies and it destroys their life.

It doesn’t have to do that. When we have our time of mourning then, and if we’re born again, we realize, oh, my purpose is to glorify God. God’s perspective is I’m created for his glory. God’s perspective is I’m to carry out the great commission. So when you go from your mourning to serving selflessness, right, you begin to walk in God’s love.

That perspective takes your mourning and turns it into joy. And that’s why this perspective is so important.

John McLarty: This perspective, it helps us and causes us and allows us to value what’s valuable.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Which is the last part of this podcast, is valuing what’s valuable.

John McLarty: And that’s part of understanding what’s valuable, which is God’s work, God’s ministry.

Kimberly Faith: Think about that example you gave, which was a really good example. You know, your child dies. Well, you valued that child, right? But when the value of that child who’s now gone outweighs the that God wants us the things that God wants us to put value on, then it destroys us. It destroys our purpose.

It destroys our life.

John McLarty: That’s great because you can’t go back and change that. Whatever that terrible circumstance is that derails us, you can’t go back and change that.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly.

John McLarty: But you’ve got life in front of you and you have other people to minister to.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: And you can’t do that if you’re in the throes of continual depression, discouragement, just, I guess we’d call it a funk, you know?

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And some people are in a lifelong

John McLarty: funk- A lifelong.

Kimberly Faith: Because of unforgiveness, a lot of things. But there’s this phrase that if if you don’t remember anything else from this podcast, which I hope that, you know, it’s help it’s been as helpful for you as it’s been studying it, it’s been for for for us, perspective determines value is such a great phrase. And I think it was Peter Kovach who said that. Context that if we can look at what we value and determine what our perspective is, And if I value my job above God’s perspective, then I can understand very quickly why I’m anxious. Because it goes back to what Matthew six says.

Jesus said, Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moss and wrath destroys, rust destroys and where thieves steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven for where your treasure is, there your heart is also. And I paraphrase that of course, but

John McLarty: That’s a great three word phrase, perspective determines value.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, yeah. And value determines perspective. You can say it backwards too. What you value determines your perspective. So if my if all my thought life, my energy, my time, my money is invested into my law practice, well, if my law practice fails or I lose my law license, I’m going to be crushed.

See, it makes us very vulnerable to have the wrong thing being valued.

John McLarty: The wrong just revolved, yes.

Kimberly Faith: Right. My-

John McLarty: I’m going around that.

Kimberly Faith: If my life revolves around my child, then if that child dies, then I’m spiraling because my perspective is wrong. Because what I valued is not what God designed me to value, which is him, his perspective. It’s a

John McLarty: great example, because I’ve known it’s affected Lynn and I have had to deal with this, but if even just a child doesn’t die, but goes astray, if your whole life is wrapped up, my child is going to be greater than me and be the great athlete or great college professor, and the child becomes a bohemian poet and roaming Europe. And if your whole life was in You’re living your life-

Kimberly Faith: For that child.

John McLarty: For the child and through the child. And the child doesn’t do as expected. And we’ve seen that. It’s real common. And

Kimberly Faith: God offers us his perspective, which gives us egregious opportunity. You think about everybody wants great opportunities, but if we don’t have his perspective, not only will our own life become valueless, won’t have any eternal value, But even equally worse, equally as bad as that, I guess, or maybe equal with that is, we won’t value people the way God wants us to value people. Because understand God’s perspective, then every person we look at, whether they’re the dirty, filthy beggar on the street, the client who comes into our office who doesn’t know how to bathe, or, you know, the president of a nation, We’re gonna look at them the same way. That’s a person created in the image of God who needs Jesus.

John McLarty: Yeah, fits right into this thought I had of just thinking about the correct perspective. Jesus had the correct perspective because he was God and is God. So what did he do? He went about ministering. And I just think, I’m so touched, we were talking about it this morning, the woman caught in adultery, that the culture was ready to stone.

Jesus loved her. And he said, woman, who is it that condemns thee? And she said, they’d all gone away. He said, neither do I. And he freed her.

He loved her and freed her and had just That’s just so touching to me.

Kimberly Faith: It really is. She was,

John McLarty: I mean, she had been She was a castaway In terms of society’s viewpoint.

Kimberly Faith: And what’s interesting is when Jesus, in that encounter

John McLarty: And that’s because of his perspective, just like you said, he saw her as a soul, an important soul. What’s interesting- Loved her.

Kimberly Faith: It’s interesting about that whole encounter that Jesus had with the woman caught in adultery is that, we’ve mentioned earlier that God’s word is discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, right? Well, Jesus really put it to those who were trying to judge her by saying, if you commit adultery He said, He who is without sin, cast the first stone. In other words, He wasn’t saying, Defy the law of Moses. He was saying, Hey, I’m bringing you to an even more clear perspective of what God should

John McLarty: That’s true. He challenged their perspective.

Kimberly Faith: He sure did.

John McLarty: About the situation.

Kimberly Faith: Because they’d gotten so caught in legalism that they’d forgotten the whole point of the Old Testament was to point them to him, you know? And instead they’d made it a man made religion that was too busy judging people for their outward behavior instead of examining their heart. And I think we were very guilty of that. Right. You know, we look at a person who maybe, you know, did something that we think is just reprehensible.

And instead of asking God, what is your perspective and how do I use your word and your spirit to be part of reaching them for your glory? Our judgment is like the clouds fall over and we’re back to visual flight rules instead of guiding God’s radar.

John McLarty: And that really, that story, boy, that Bible incident, that true story, Jesus valued her soul.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: Yeah. And that changed his perspective.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: Or that he didn’t guided his perspective. He didn’t have to change his perspective. But that changed the perspective of that whole situation.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And I think, God loves us so much. He wants us to have a satisfying life. He wants to give us an opportunity to capture eternal, meaningful rewards every day. He wants us to be able to cast crowns at His feet.

You know, He wants to walk into heaven or slide into heaven or whatever, you know, and hear, well done, well done, good and faithful servant. Because that is a great reward. We’re gonna be in God’s presence unfettered by sin, unclouded by the trouble of this world someday. And how wonderful it would be to know that every day that we lived, that we did our very best to bring as many people as we could with us to God into his presence. And by having God’s perspective, we will never miss an opportunity

John McLarty: And to what a challenge. What are our treasures?

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: And what that’s based on our perspective, what we value.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. And I think we have to, if we’re really gonna For me, I had to really step back and examine myself. I had to kind of look at what I value emotionally, what I value mentally, what I value financially. Is that eternal or is it temporary? And if it’s temporary, my Like if I wake up in the morning worried about a case at work, instead of saying, God, thank you for this day, guide my path, plant your word in my heart so I won’t sin against you.

Help me to see your perspective, see people through your eyes. And instead of worried about a case that’s never no one’s ever gonna remember even though next year, that tells me I need to readjust my perspective or I’m gonna miss opportunities.

John McLarty: That’s so true. Just for our listeners, we’re looking at Bible verses and Jesus is the perfect example. And we know of this, but you and I, we fight this every day, this perspective. It’s like, no, we’re aware of it and how important it is, but we fail every day. I mean, we treasure my to do list, treasure some yard work over a soul.

And so this is the continual challenge of a Christian.

Kimberly Faith: Even Minute by minute almost. Even this morning, I went out to the front porch and I was it’s nice and cool outside and I was getting ready have my quiet time and the little neighbor girl saw me and of course she came over. And in my, you know, I have this motivation, wanna spend time with God.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Well, that wasn’t what God had planned. And He gently reminded me that this is a treasured moment for you to encourage, to ask her questions that make her understand her value, to share with her the joys that I’m doing in your life, to spend time pointing her to me. That’s spending time with me, Kim. You you had this rigid schedule for your quiet time. Well, and probably if you’d get got your hiney out of bed a little early, you’d have a little more time, but she slept.

I mean, it’s Saturday, right?

John McLarty: We’re glad you got to sleep in.

Kimberly Faith: Just This has been such a game changer for me to I just remind myself, you know, of perspective determining my value. And if I am valuing even my convenient quiet time over a soul, then I need to change my perspective.

John McLarty: Right, so soul’s not money, status, possessions, or our time. Our time is kind of like money.

Kimberly Faith: It’s almost valuable. We can’t get it the we have,

John McLarty: it’s a limited amount and how do we allocate it? And it should be for the furtherance of the gospel.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, I think that is a really good way to end this, dad, because I think, you know, who are we taking to heaven with us? You know, who are we planting? And I’m not saying this isn’t, you know, go around and force people to receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior, but we’re supposed to be sowers of the seed and planting.

John McLarty: Ambassadors for Christ.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And representing, like you said earlier, the joy of the Lord. People are drawn to people who are satisfied in their life, who have peace.

John McLarty: Peace, joy, love,

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: The fruits of the spirit.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. If we have God’s perspective, we are going to produce the fruits of the spirit. It’s impossible not to. So, good talk, dad. It’s good.

John McLarty: Challenging. Challenging. Challenging to me. I’ll have to ponder this. It’s finger pointed right back at

Kimberly Faith: us. Exactly. Exactly. Well

John McLarty: How are you going to apply this today?

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And I think, so thanks for listening today, and we’re excited to kinda do a a one year anniversary recap next week and hope you’ll join us for that.

Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the truth and love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mack. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.