What do you do when you are up against a challenge? Do you focus on the problem, possibly losing sleep over solutions? Or have you tried gazing on the ultimate problem solver? “Glance and Gaze” was a principle I was taught as a young follower of Jesus that has proven true again and again.
Think about it a bit. What are some of the qualities that make our God different from us? Unlike me, the one who made us is 100% reliable, all powerful, knows everything that ever was or ever will be. This God is good, kind, patient, usually gentle and perfectly loving. With those attributes on my side I think I can begin to relax, at least a bit.
Easy to say and a little tougher to put into practice, but man, trust me, it is worth it!
The idea of glance and gaze is to glance at the problem, not soak in it. That time I save by not staring at the problem I use to gaze at the one who has all the wisdom and resources to solve my problem. And by gaze, I do not mean begging or pleading for help. I mean worship, looking steadily in awe and wonder at how beautiful and magnificent is the One who holds us all in balance.
When I gaze at the source of life, I can’t help but begin to worship. When I worship, the very thing that had me troubled begins to change in front of me. Often it changes from a dominating, energy-sucking thing to something God has control over. Then because I am perfectly loved and God knows both me and my circumstances, I begin to breathe a little more easily and hope begins to blossom. It is almost as if the challenge changes shape and size. Compared to Creator, whatever the problem is becomes remarkably smaller and more manageable. The problem may not have changed, but my relationship to it has. It is now in Gods hands, not mine.
Decades of glancing and gazing to varying degrees of success has taught me a lot about the trustworthiness of our Creator who is so worthy of all the gazing I can muster.
I love these two verses:
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and to inquire in his temple.” Ps 27:4
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own….” 1 Cor 6:19
Those of us who follow Jesus have the advantage of being able to gaze upon the Lord up close and personally because we are the temple of the Holy Spirit! We can find God in the Bible, in Creation, in our walk of faith, through other faithful followers of Jesus, and in the still small voice of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. Worship music is one of my personal favorites and fastest ways to get me to move from the problem to the one who holds the answers. How about you?
What do you need to glance at today? How do you choose to gaze today?
