Embracing the Perspective of God

Learning the Life Skill of Self-as-Context   

When I was a teenager, I loved watching slasher movies. What can I say—it was the eighties. Even the TV commercials eventually picked up on one of the genre’s most familiar patterns: people making choices the average viewer would never make. Imagine one of those ridiculous movies where someone is being chased by a crazed killer. They run past a sports car with the convertible top down, the engine running, and no one in the car. Instead of jumping in and escaping, they run straight into a tool shed filled with every imaginable farming implement suitable for slaughter. No matter how many times we watched that videotape—remember, it was the eighties—those actors kept making the same fatal decisions. We yelled at the screen and warned them, but they never changed their actions.

Sometimes we feel like one of those actors—stuck in a horror movie, repeatedly making the same bad decisions as though we have no other choice. But what if we do have a choice? What if options are right in front of us, but we just cannot see them from where we are standing? Who can we trust to show us those options? And once we see them, how do we learn to choose differently?

Like those movie characters, I used to feel trapped by a lack of choices. Then I realized that someone always has the highest perspective: the writer and director. As a trained and experienced mental health coach, I can sometimes see options people are too close to their own pain, patterns, or circumstances to notice. I can also help them recognize opportunities to embrace better choices. But I have limits.

God sees every option for every decision we could ever make. He knows every what-if and every outcome. He sees the beginning and the end, like a videotape He has already seen an infinite number of times. Better yet, He does not merely watch time unfold frame by frame; He sees every moment from beginning to end as one complete whole. While we may know the outcome of a movie better than the characters do, God knows the outcome of every life throughout time—and He knows how to orchestrate the greatest outcome for His glory and our benefit.

There is one more advantage to God’s perspective: He can orchestrate change and better choices in our lives because He is all-knowing, all-powerful, inescapably present, the very definition of love and grace, and the final authority over creation, time, and providence. When we embrace God’s perspective, we begin to see our struggles, shortcomings, hope, and successes differently. His perspective reveals options for recovery, healing, and transformation. With this knowledge, we do what we can by faith to embrace those changes, and then God does for us what we cannot. If learning to see from God’s perspective can help us recognize choices we once missed, then it is worth asking what else He might want to show us—and how our lives might change when we begin to see ourselves, our stories, and our next steps through His eyes.

If you are ready to explore what God may be showing you from His perspective, I would be honored to walk with you. Together, we can look at the places where you feel stuck, name the choices you may not yet see, and seek God’s wisdom for the next faithful step. You do not have to figure it out alone—and you may discover that His perspective has been opening a way forward all along.