We’ve just finished a week long discussion about how viewing challenges (i.e. Perspective is Crucial) is crucial to victorious living. I want to end our discussion with an illustration from the college graduating class of 2010.
“About half of the class of 2010 still hadn’t found a job almost a year after graduating. (By contrast, 90 percent of the classes of 2006 and 2007 already had jobs a year later). The first thing they’re getting is an attitude adjustment. The bad economy is doing them a favor by teaching them the value of a job.”
To many, having a job is seen as a right rather than a privilege. Yet no one, let alone the business world, owes us anything. As one writer put it, “Not every one wins, there is only one rung on the latter at the top; therefore only one person gets to stand there at a time.”
This reality smacks up against the coddling “everyone is a winner” attitude that’s been preached on American campuses. This lie-based message has also worked its way into the Evangelical Church. As one Israeli congregational leader said, “I am fearful that the steady diet of cotton candy and sweet nothings that Christians are being fed in the majority of the Evangelical churches is desensitizing the conscience of the Christians and putting their minds to sleep.”
Life on this planet is hard, especially for believers who live in enemy territory. When those challenges come, and they will, we must realize that Jesus owes us absolutely nothing. It is only by God’s grace (i.e. getting what we don’t deserve) and mercy (i.e. holding back what we do deserve) through Jesus that we can enter into the presence of a holy and loving God during those hard times. Jesus earned and is standing at the top of the ladder, and out of His great love for us, He is giving us a hand up.
We can either whine about our challenges or we can take His hand and win in the midst of them. We can look down at the challenge or look up at Jesus. The perspective by which we view challenges is crucial to the outcome we’ll experience. I don’t know about you, but I’ll gratefully take the hand I don’t deserve – His.

Set Free No“W”ww