[Steve Myers] The other day, I was reading an article and I came upon this word I didn't recognize – "POV". And it took me by surprise because I didn't know what it meant. And then after I looked it up a little bit, I realized it was kind of an abbreviation for "point of view". Point of view. Then I started seeing it all over the place – POV, point of view. And it's one of those terms that points to the fact that it was their viewpoint, it was their thought, it was their perspective – and that was what it was saying about this particular politician, about his POV, his point of view, or in the way that he observed situations from his perspective. And as I thought about point of view, I thought about God's perspective.
What about God's POV? What about God's perspective of you? Have you ever wondered how God looks at you? Sometimes we get a feeling that, you know, God sees us as flawed, terrible individuals, totally sinful at all times. And yet, His POV really is not like that when we strive to follow Him.
Zephaniah tells us something interesting. Not an oft-quoted particular book, but in Zephaniah 3:17, in the Contemporary English Version it says this: "The Lord your God wins victory after victory and is always with you. He celebrates and sings because of you, and He will refresh your life with His love." In fact, some of the versions even say He sings over you. Isn't that a wonderful perspective of the kind of loving God that we have? You know, when we try to be His children and follow His will, He looks at us like that. So never doubt that God loves you and that He cares for you. And we can feel all kinds of things, yet feelings come and go. Feelings aren't reality. Even though sometimes we can't escape them and we look at things from our perspective, let's step back, notice God's perspective.
In fact, there's a passage in Deuteronomy that I think is also so encouraging – Deuteronomy 7:9. It says, "Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God. He's faithful, He keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations to those who love Him and keep His commandments." You see, when we start living our life by God's POV, from God's perspective, He says there is no way He's not going to keep His covenant. There's no way He's not going to love us and be merciful for us.
So even when life is tough, and things cloud our perspective, they cloud our point of view, don't let that get you down. We can live with incredible confidence because we know God has a special point of view when it comes to us. So let's look at every circumstance in life from that viewpoint. Let's have that type of perspective from God's point of view, and we can certainly do that when we always remember to take courage and look at life from God's POV.
