Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the last few years grieving what I perceived to be losses.
There was the loss of my beloved home.
The loss of the dental practice I spent a year setting up.
The loss of my church.
The loss of friends
The loss of loved ones.
The loss of the ministry I ran.
The loss of my identity.
The list continued in my mind daily.
I was perceiving a ton of loss and was truly struggling. My life seemed turned upside down. My familiar and normal ceased to exist. I was treading on new territory and I felt like a swimmer who could not reach the shore fighting the riptide.
The clue here is perceived.
Sometimes what we perceive isn’t what actually is.
I spent so much time going over in my mind what I thought I lost that I could not recognize all that I had gained, even though the aroma of it was all around me. I was blind and could not see.
I was trapped in perception.
The devil is the master of perception.
He wants us to feel lost. He wants us to wander. He wants us to perceive loss in all things.
He wants our perception to be altered.
By achieving this, he manages to keep our eyes and minds away from what is truth.
The truth of what God is doing with our lives.
When we look and think with the mind of Christ, it becomes impossible to view things as losses. Because with Christ, everything lost is gained.
Everything dead becomes life and everything evil is turned to good.
Our perception needs to be about Him. Our focus needs to be Him.
Once I realized what was happening to me, my entire perception of my reality changed almost in an instant.
I have a new home. This one is filled with laughter and joy, not sorrow and pain. I have a fabulous new job.
I have new friends and the old ones still exist.
I am in the process of gaining a new church family.
My one ministry ended, but my new ministries are flourishing and bearing fruit.
My life is different and changed, but the reality is that it is beautiful. It was all my perception.
What perception is the devil making you hold?
Where in your life are you allowing yourself to only focus on loss?
Have you considered your loss as an actual blessing?
Again, with Christ at the center, there is nothing lost—only an eternity of blessings that are freely ours as His children just by asking to receive them.
So, I say to you today, move past your perceived losses and into the reality of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God who reigns over everything and everyone.
He makes everything beautiful in its time. The things He allows to become ash are resurrected with a new life and a transforming nature.
This is possible only because of who He is.
So turn your thoughts and ideas and perceptions of the world around you to Him and watch how He redeems everything holy and beautiful.
I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light until you experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling—that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that he finds in us, his holy ones! —Ephesians 1:18 TPT
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Holy Beautiful Life
Featured Image by Caleb Woods on Unsplash
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