The well-know American actor Chris Pine once said, “The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don’t have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it.” Dr. Lynn Clark, specialist in REBT (Relational Emotive Behavior Therapy), shares the power of perspective but changing the way you see an activating event. An activating event is any event that triggers a response from you.
In essence, the power of REBT comes from the idea that you accept the activating event and reinterpret or challenge your belief about that event, therefore altering and changing the outcome of its impact on your life. You are driving down the road, someone cuts you off, and your reaction to the activating event is filtered through your belief about that event. You curse, yell, and wish them an early death as a result of how you believe this event is bad.
Changing that belief about being cut off changes your reaction and outcome of that event. “Perhaps, he cut me off because he is trying to get to his wife who’s giving birth” is a narrative you tell yourself. In this manner, being cut off isn’t so bad. What if you could do the same thing in your spiritual life?
What if you could change your perspective in the spiritual real to reflect a Biblical perspective that could change your entire life! As you listen to the sermonic thought today (at the Milton-Freewater church), there is a perspective bound up in an unusual promise God made to a king of old, King Ahaz. Listen, learn and change your perspective…for it will change the outcome of your life!
So until he next time, this is Pastor Tello reminding you that thoughts do change lives?
Pastor Howard Tello