Half-full?
Are you a half-full or half-empty person? Human beings seem to be in one of these camps. We either see things positively or negatively. I hover between the two!
God has intended that we always see things from a half-full perspective. He is always positive and gives us hope beyond our imagination and often our experience.
However our upbringing, our personality, our experiences in life can cause us to be the half-empty people who I readily identify with. I catch myself saying something negative and need to resay it the way I want it to really be. How amazing that God knows all about our quandry and gives us Romans 12:2 to read and meditate on.
“Do not change yourselves to be like the people of this world, but be changed within by a new way of thinking. Then you will be able to decide what God wants for you; you will know what is good and pleasing to him and what is perfect.” (New Century Bible)
As we focus our minds on God and his character then we can become like him – always positive; giving compliments; listening to others; believing the best of others; and thinking well of ourselves (ensuring that what we think is what God has said about us).
As we know God’s love in our hearts we realise that he is enough to fill us up to the brim and overflowing with his Holy Spirit. Then we can see each circumstance or situation or comment from at least a half-full angle. Then we can believe God to fill us up and over with his love and grace and kindness and care to be the people he always intended us to be so that instead of reacting to others, by God’s grace, we can respond with his love.
Have just been working on Set E, Book 4 of Diamond Books and I am reminded there how the 12 spies were sent into Canaan by Moses so that they could report back about the land. Two of the spies were very positive but the others were frightened and negative about the prospect of going to live there. The consequences for those who were negative were dire and they missed out on God’s best for them. Let’s be like the 2 (Joshua and Caleb) who believed that God could overcome every difficulty. “Without faith no one can please God” (Hebrews 11:6 – New Century Bible) so let’s be believing believers – half-full and rising to full capacity!