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Tag: #perspective

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The Spiral of Growth

I liken the pathway of our walk with Christ to a spiral because we often revisit places we have been but from a higher perspective. If we do not recognize our upward growth we may feel like we are going around in circles but we usually aren’t (unless we are not growing of course).

An easy illustration from my life is secular music. I love music. In my teen years, I had a collection of over 100 cassettes. (I know some of you may not know what this is and even fewer have ever seen one but it was how we stored music back in the day. A cassette held 60-90min of music.) I had a song for every mood and listened to everything from heavy metal to reggae. Music comforted me through romantic breakups. Music helped me study in college. Music formed the soundtrack of my life to such a degree that to this day particular songs bring back the emotions of particular seasons like it was yesterday. Then, at 21, I got saved and one day God showed me that my music was an idol in my life and I packed up all my cassettes and threw them out.

Fast-forward a decade and I am struggling in my faith. It has become clear that I may have thrown the cassettes out of my room but not out of my heart. Internally, I still crave secular songs especially since (at this time) gospel music SUCKS in variety and quality. Eventually, I left the church and re-united with many of my old secular habits including music.

Fast-forward another decade more or less, and I’m making my way back to God but this time it’s from a place of heartfelt repentance. I’m falling in love with a God so merciful that He would still accept me, forgive me, and welcome me into His arms. Now I realize that the genre of music is not important, it’s about my heart. I love Jesus and I don’t care about all that religious external stuff. Once it’s good clean lyrics, it’s all good.

Here I am today and what’s my position on music? You guessed it, I only listen to worship music. Not just Christian music but only music that leads me to worship God more. But this time, it’s what I delight to do. I can listen to anything but I only want to worship God.

This is what the upward spiral of growth looks like (at least in my experience). This will happen in many areas of our lives. Take past traumas for example. We may at one point be in a season where God is healing us from childhood trauma. Then we may think we are all good only to revisit the same trauma again years later and receive a deeper healing. Then we may revisit again but this time God may call us to become a facilitator of healing for others. And so the spiral goes. In fact, don’t be surprised if while helping others to heal you are again faced with open wounds that are still festering in your soul and have to lay on God’s doctor’s table again, all the while battling feelings of being unqualified to help others.

Paul dealt with this in 1 Co 8 when addressing the issue of foods sacrificed to idols. He recognized that some people lower on the spiral would be convinced that it would be a sin against God if they ate foods sacrificed to idols. while others higher on the spiral would understand that the idol is nothing and they can eat freely. This clash of Christians at different levels of growth with different perspectives on the same issue is very common in our social media landscape today. In fact, I would say if you ever look at one of the many videos ‘calling out’ leaders on blasphemous or heretic behaviour, 9 out of 10 times it’s just a matter of people being on different levels of the spiral.

Paul gives us the way to handle it. The person higher on the spiral actually has the responsibility to meet the other person where they are at. It’s the only possible way. Those looking at their brothers and sisters up above cannot possibly understand their perspective but those above can understand and accommodate those below. When I was in my ‘listening to secular music’ phase I remember a brother suggesting that I only listen to worship music and I was like, “This guy is religious.” Yet, look at me now! lol I’ve learned not to be so fully convinced that I have THE true perspective. If I am growing my perspective will change over time, and the more open I am to seeing things differently, the faster I will grow. I’ve also learned that my perspectives will sound like heresy to some and that argument as a means to influence is usually futile. Some things you have to experience for yourself.

So my exhortation to you my beloved sisters and brothers is to keep this concept of the spiral in mind as you grow in your faith. Do not be dismayed when old issues come back around, instead see it as an opportunity to face it from a higher perspective and learn something new. And let’s not be so quick to call our brothers and sisters heretics and blasphemers ok? We all see the world differently based on where we are on our journey. Let’s support and encourage each other and leave the Holy Spirit to do his work in each other’s lives as only he can.

Love and blessings,

Copyright 2023, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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Do I Love Working from Home?

Yes I do, but I didn’t always feel that way about some aspects of our new normal. My new perspective on work from home started with this statement:

“Daddy, you have to help me with a PowerPoint presentation for school.”

“OK, bring your laptop next to mine and you will follow what I do.”

As I sat showing my 12-year-old the magic of animation and the art of the layout, I felt oddly useful. Finally, a school project that is super relevant to the real world and that I’m really good at! I got to pass on my knowledge to the next generation.

Time travel back to over a thousand years ago, and the two of us could have been putting horseshoes on a horse or kneading dough for the family’s famous bread that supplied the whole village. Back then (in the 1800s, before the industrial revolution and urbanization), work was mainly done by hand at home. People lived where they worked. Turn… turn… turn… and here we are again living and working in the same location, albeit in a completely new way. Truly there is nothing new under the sun, as King Solomon would say.

I understood in a new way what had been lost with the industrial revolution and lost again with women heading into the workforce en masse in more recent times. I remembered reading about Corrie Ten Boom and her family of watchmakers, living atop their little shop. I remembered reading about the family rituals where work and leisure intermingled like a tapestry, and children grew up observing not just a tiny slice of their parents’ lives, but the gamut of dealing with customers, handling crises and honing their craft. The scope of learning was entirely more holistic and relevant to real life.

I came out of my reverie with a new perspective. I had been bemoaning the loss of separation between work and family life and the stress of sharing my work space with my children. BUT… what if there is a golden opportunity here that we have been completely missing? Consider this with me…

Every time our children crash our Zoom meeting is not a cause for embarrassment or anxiety, it is actually an opportunity for them to learn how work gets done in the real world. A world they will soon inherit.  The type of work and the tools may be different, but the core lessons are not much different to managing the family farm.

In a counter-intuitive way (given that this virtual world has been vilified as one that alienates), we have also removed some of the distance that separated us from our co-workers and customers. In that bygone era of village life, co-workers and sometimes customers became like family. Inviting someone into your shop was almost the same as inviting them into your home after all. Life was lived in closer proximity. There is an opportunity now to invite each other again into our virtual spaces… to welcome it instead of resisting it. There is the opportunity to discuss a piece of work with your colleague, for example, with the sound of your daughter’s piano lessons in the background. “Wow, she has improved so much since last time!” we would remark humorously, remembering the cacophony that jarred our last meeting. The world needs more proximity in my estimation. Separation allow us to co-exist without ever really knowing each other. I believe many of our societal schisms and racial tensions would evaporate in time if we simply got to know each other better.

There is power in perspective. There is a moving scene in the bible where Joseph confronts his brothers who sold him into slavery. Many, many years have passed. Joseph has experienced servitude and imprisonment but comes through it all through the divine hand and favor of God. As he stands reunited with his brothers, the highest official over the kingdom of Egypt after Pharoah, he reveals himself to them and they are understandably afraid. To reassure them he makes this monumental statement, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Joseph had a different perspective.

We too today, need to bring to the world a different perspective. Paul said that for those who love God and are called according to His purpose, all things work together for good. This is the truth that Joseph demonstrated and understood as he looked back over his life. As we stand in the midst of this global pandemic, we should have a keen sense that, this too is working for God’s good purpose. Wrapped inside the pandemic package are gold nuggets that it is our privilege as sons of God to prophetically discern and mine.

It’s a great time to be alive! What shift in perspective can you make to help you engage more powerfully with the purpose of God at this time?

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Copyright 2020, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.