EPISODE 44 / "THE WAY WE SEE THE PROBLEM IS THE PROBLEM"

In 2007, there was a problem with the phones at a church being built. The phone company representative in the Philippines insisted the problem was inside the building, but it was actually a cut phone cable outside. The lesson is that our perspective on problems is important. We should see them through the lens of God's Word and set aside our feelings, opinions, and desires. The devil can manipulate situations, so we need to have the right perspective and recognize his tactics. Overall, we need to be honest and sincere in identifying the true problem and not let it destroy relationships or our faith. Well, I guess it was around 2007. We were building the new church and came in one morning and the phones weren't working. So we started investigating, checking the phones, checking the cables, the wall jacks and all this other stuff and couldn't figure out why the phone wasn't working. Well, I went outside, they were getting ready to pour some concrete and there was a huge hole that they had dug and I looked down in this hole and you could see the cable, the phone cable, and it was two ends there. They had gone down in there with a backhoe or something and had cut the cable in half. So I came inside and called the phone company and of course I was talking to someone I found out later was in the Philippines and telling her, look, we have an outage. We need somebody to come out and fix this situation. I told her the whole story and she said, well, I'll run a test from here to make sure where the problem is. And so she said she did that and she came back and said, well, we're showing that the problem is inside the building. I said, well, no ma'am, I said, it's outside. There's a hole. I can look in the hole and see the two wires. I can see where the cable, I can see the two halves where it is broken in half. And she said, well, I'll run another test and check and see. And she did that and she kept insisting it's inside and if we come out and the problem is on the inside, we're going to have to charge you this and charge you that. And then she started making me think I might be crazy. Maybe that's not the phone cable. Maybe that's not the problem. Maybe it's a coincidence that there's a hole with a cable chopped in half and our phones aren't working. So we just kept kind of going through that until I finally said, look, just send them out. I can clearly see what the problem is. There's a hole and the phone cable is cut in two. Well, a serviceman came out from cold water and he looked, he said, yeah, that's the problem. I told him the whole sordid tale of how this lady in the Philippines had run a test and told me that it was inside our walls. He said, listen, he said, they can't do that. We couldn't even run a test from cold water. Sure. Certainly they're not doing it from the Philippines. Here's the thing. A lot of times when we have problems, if we'll be honest, if we'll look, we can see what the problem really is. We can see the root of what has caused us the situation, what is causing us grief, what has brought us to a time of making a hard decision. In John chapter 12 in verse 35, this is what Jesus said to his disciples. He said, yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you. For he that walketh in darkness knoweth not where he's going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be the children of the light. Then down in verse 40, he said, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart. They should not see with their eyes nor understand their heart and be converted, and I could heal them. God's word talks about walking in the light as he is in the light. He's talking about seeing with our eyes. Friends, we don't have to walk through life guessing, walk through life blinded by Satan. We don't have to walk through life not knowing what's going on. Stephen Covey wrote a book called Seven Habits of a Highly Effective People. In that book, this sentence, he wrote a lot of good stuff, but this sentence kind of sticks out. He said, the way we see the problem is the problem. Man, marinate on that. Chew on that for a little bit. The way that we see the problem is the problem. When we come to bumps in the road and we come to relational problems or financial problems or spiritual problems, the real problem is how we see the situation. It's our perspective. Without proper perspective, we will rationalize. We will try to make our problem common or make it someone else's fault. We will rationalize our situation or we will ignore it altogether. We'll say things like, well, this is common. There's nothing we can do about it. We'll blame it on somebody else, blame it on something else. In essence, if we don't have the right perspective, if we don't see the problems in the right light or the way we see the problem is the problem, if we don't think about that and if we don't realize that, here's what we're going to do. We're going to see what we want to see. We're going to do what we want to do. We're going to ignore that there's a possibility that it's our fault, that it's a problem that could have been avoided and it's a problem that maybe could be solved very easily. The Christian perspective, of course, as we talked before, is our worldview. How do we see the world? Do we see the world through secular eyes, through governmental eyes, through educational eyes? No. For the Christian, our perspective, our worldview, how we see everything is through the lens of God's Word. That's the pair of glasses that we put on when we become a child of God is we see our problems, we see our families, we see our finances, we see our purpose in this world, through the lens of God's Word, through the eyes of Christ, someone has said. If we don't have the proper perspective and we come across problems, even the Bible guarantees us in this world we're going to have trouble, but we should be of good cheer because he's overcome the world. That if we don't have the right perspective and when we encounter these things that we are surely going to encounter, it's going to blow up on us. It's going to be a bigger deal than it ever should have been. If we don't see the problem in the right way, we can hurt people and alienate people. We can dig a deeper hole financially. We can miss God's will for a great opportunity in our life if we don't have the proper perspective. The way we see the problem is the problem. There's three things I think we need to do when we encounter problems, when we come to this type of thing in our life. Number one, three things we should set aside, let's put it that way. We should set aside our feelings. Don't let your emotions drive you. When we come to situations, when we come to a crisis, a fork in the road, we should never let our feelings drive us. Adrian Rogers says that our feelings, our emotions are the most shallow part of us. God never does his deepest work in our most shallow part. When we come to a problem, let's see the problem properly through the right perspective and set aside our feelings so we can deal with it. Number two, we should set aside our opinions, our prejudices. We should set aside what we bring, preconceived notions to the problem. This is the way it's always worked out. This is the way it'll still work out. This is the way somebody else did this. This is how they worked through it. We should set aside our feelings and we should set aside our opinions or our prejudices when we come to a unique situation in our life. Lastly, we should set aside our desires. This is probably the most important. When we come to a crisis, to a crossroad, to a problem in our life, we should set aside our desire to outcome, that we are going to try to force what we want. We're going to try to force the square peg into the round hole and make things come out not the way our Heavenly Father would want us to make them come out, but how we want them to come out. I think of, like in Ephesians chapter six, Ephesians chapter six, let me get it up here. Ephesians chapter six in verse 12. I ought to be able to just do it by heart here. It says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in high places. There it talks about when we have struggles, if we're having a struggle with our mate, our wife, our husband, and it's getting really serious, we have to have the right perspective. The way we see the problem is the problem. If we see our mate, our child, our grandchild, our boss, our neighbor, our coworker, if we see them as the enemy and we bring our feelings into it, our opinions and how we want it to work out, if we fail to see it right, that listen, this is really a struggle with the kingdom of darkness. That's just a perfect example of God's word telling us that we have to have the right perspective. We have to know who the real enemy is. When we do that, we can see behind the mask. We can see the real problem. We can see that the devil orchestrates a lot of things in our life and in our world to trip us up, to help us alienate fellow believers, to split up a family, to cause you to lose your job where you're being effective. We will see it with the proper perspective that Satan is at work and has devised these plans to destroy us. He's like a roaring lion. He's just roaming to and fro just looking for somebody to mess up. I looked down and there's this hole. I knew what the problem was, but I almost allowed this woman to talk me into the fact that I wasn't seeing what I was seeing, that she could tell from somewhere in the Philippines that I had a severed wire or a mouse and choose a connection into somewhere in the walls and that was my problem. My common sense, my perspective standing above that big muddy hole said, here's the problem. I think when we allow God to show us what the real problem is, and we will be honest and we will be sincere, that we can see what the real problem is in a lot of our situations and a lot of our crisis. It doesn't have to be a relationship ender. It doesn't have to be a witness destroyer. We can see that the devil is doing a lot behind the scenes. That's the advice for today. Out of God's word. The way we see our problems sometimes is the greatest problem. I hope you have a good week. I hope that God prospers you this week. I hope that God just goes ahead of you, that you have the sunshine on your face and the wind at your back. I hope you get some divine appointments where you can share Christ this week. I hope that when you do encounter crisis, that you can see behind the mask, see the wizard behind the scene, that often it's the devil. How we look at our problems sometimes is our problem. Let me pray for you and let's get on with our week. Father God, we thank you Lord for this day. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you God that you don't leave us stranded, hopeless and helpless, that you guide us every day. God, help us to put on the lens. Put on the glasses of your word that we view everything in life but what your word says. I pray that you'll bless my friends this week, that you'll prosper them, that you'll guide their steps, that you'll protect them as they come and go, that you would, Lord, you would draw them closer to those that love them and that they love and that you would use them for your kingdom's sake this week. God, we love you and we thank you so much for loving us first. In Jesus name, amen.