Musings on Truly Positive
It is so easy to be negative about everything
There are always a great many things to be upset about!
The news is full of fear and drama.
Social media makes us compare ourselves to others.
We see the sin in our world and the sin in our own hearts.
The easiest and most natural response to all of this is to complain. We can be filled with anxiety and find that our thoughts and conversations tend to the negative side of things.
I noticed this in myself and others a few years ago. Most of the Christian bloggers online spend much of their time pointing out how other Christian traditions are wrong or how some aspect of the wider world is sinful. Also, many of the Christians I spoke to seemed overwhelmed with life a lot of the time.
It occurred to me that Christians are people who have such good reason to be more positive than this!
We know about sin, but we also know that if we trust in Jesus, our sins are forgiven. We know that the world is not as it should be, but we also know that Jesus is the King of everything, the one who died and rose again. We should be people who feel joy and not only the weight of the problems in the world.
This inspired me to write a book entitled ‘Truly Positive: Seeing the world differently because of Jesus’, which was published recently by Genesis Books, an imprint of Armour Publishing in Singapore.
I hope that this book will go some way to reminding Christians that there is more to life than the negative. All Christians have such good reasons to see the joy as well as the problems in life.
My state of overwhelm
I am a positive, optimistic person by nature. On my good days, I often move around humming to myself while noticing the beauty around me!
Yet even I have struggled with this issue in the recent past. Like all other Christians, I needed to be reminded of the kinds of things I have written in ‘Truly Positive’.
As an elder in my church, I often have a range of problems to think through and deal with. I have the privilege of sitting with people who are going through serious illness, grief, family conflicts, and work dramas. I have a front row seat to so much pain and suffering.
It can be overwhelming. This world is broken and full of sin in all kinds of ways, not just abstract ways out there, but in the lives of the people I love and serve. And, of course, in myself!
Have you ever had the experience of negative patterns of thought cycling through your mind, to the extent that you cannot sleep? I found myself in that position several times in the past couple of years. I found myself worrying through something that often had no simple solution.
I realised that this was damaging me and not really fixing anything. As Jesus famously said, you cannot add an extra hour to your life by worrying.
I needed to remind myself, and have others remind me, that God was in control of the world, not me.
I needed to realise that there remains joy in the world and peace with God even when I was facing some significant problem.
In other words, I needed to learn live out what I believed. I needed to pray and reflect on God’s goodness, on what I have already been given, rather than dwelling only on what I did not have.
The task of change
The biggest concern of ‘Truly Positive’ is to bring some well-needed perspective to our thinking and lives. When life is difficult and we find ourselves anxious or complaining, we lose the perspective on life we should have as Christians.
It is like when you slam your finger in a door. Immediately after that, all you can feel is the pain in your finger. It is all you can think about. If you wait a little while, the pain fades and you realise that it was not as bad as it seemed to be.
Pain and suffering have a way of making us self-absorbed and unable to see the bigger picture. When our finger is so sore, we fail to be thankful for our usual good health and lack of pain, and we fail to notice the joy and beauty that is always there to see.
It’s not that the pain is not real or not terrible. There is a great deal of pain and suffering in the world in all kinds of forms. It will do us no good to pretend that things are fine when they are not! There is room for lament and confession, cries for help towards God and asking for help from friends.
Yet, over and over again the Scriptures, we find encouragement to find the bigger perspective of God’s love.
Jesus told us to trust in the Father who loves us, even while we worry about food and clothing (Matt 6:25-28).
Paul tells us that our troubles, as great as they are, are light and momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory that is coming (2 Corinthians 4:17).
The key is finding the right perspective and remembering all that Jesus has done for us.
Having this right perspective, seeing God’s goodness and control of the world, leads to all kinds of practical changes in our lives.
Instead of only noticing that the local church is full of problems and issues, you will notice that the Word of God is faithfully preached, people are growing and serving, and the church community is acting as a real family so often.
Instead of only absorbing the news that drives us to the point of despair, we will remember the promises God makes about an eternal, perfect future for all who trust in Jesus.
All of us have a tendency to the negative rather than the positive. We so easily fail to be grateful for the good things in our lives, especially if they are things that are always true.
How often have we longed for a better place to live, only seeing the problems with our accommodation rather than the good things about it? How often have we taken the fact that our sins are forgiven for granted, not realising the enormity of what it means to be saved by grace through Jesus?
I want to become more of an encourager to those around me. If I truly believe that Jesus has been so good to me, I will want others to know this too. I will want to share my faith, confident that the Spirit will change peoples’ hearts. I will want to see how I can help other Christians who are struggling with anxiety and negativity to understand how deeply loved they are by Jesus, even when they don’t feel it to be true.
‘Truly Positive: Seeing the world differently because of Jesus’ is available in paperback from a range of places, and as an ebook through Amazon. I pray that it helps you in some small way to see that trusting in Jesus changes everything for the better.