What are you looking at?

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The other night the B99 and I were watching an episode of Bull and God showed me something. In the scene, Bull couldn’t get his infant daughter to stop crying, so he went out on the patio of his studio apartment and sat down so that his baby could see the lights of the city, and just like that, she stopped crying.

Oh, if it was that easy, right parents?

Now, that trick may not get your baby to go from tears to giggles, but I think there’s something in it about the impact that what we’re looking at can have.

John 8:12 reveals something fascinating: Jesus is the Light of the … wait for it … WORLD. He isn’t just the Light, and He isn’t just the Light of heaven. He is the light that shines in the darkness and that can’t be overcome by the darkness (see John 1:5). Since He’s the Light of the world, then it stands to reason that, just like Bull’s baby, we can change our perspective and look at His light instead of only seeing the darkness.

So, what happens if we choose to look at Jesus instead of all the crazy?

We’ll have peace (see Isaiah 26:3).
We’ll remember that we aren’t the author of the story (see Hebrews 12:2)
We’ll walk over the storms we encounter (see Matthew 14:28-30)

And because Jesus is the Light of the world, I believe that we’ll see His light everywhere because His followers will be holding out the light (see Matthew 5:14-15) and shining like stars against the backdrop of darkness (see Philippians 2:15-16).

But we’ll only see the Light if we’re looking for it, because we tend to only see what we’re looking for.

Our reactions to our circumstances reveal what we’re looking at.

I pray they reveal Jesus.

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Written by Paul Jenkins
Paul Jenkins is lead pastor of The Gathering, a community church located in beautiful downtown Albemarle, North Carolina. He's the author of God is My Air Traffic Controller and My Name's Not Lou. Paul is passionate about his wife, his 3 children, running, reading, coaching, leading people who are following Jesus, Swedish Fish and the Carolina Panthers.