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"We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."


A thought by Mark Batterson from his book, Win the Day (p. 23). The Crown Publishers Group. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

No we don't and yes we do.

Mark says, "We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. If you want to win today, you’ve got to start by rewriting yesterday."

Earlier Mark said, "The story of the Exodus is Israel’s signature story. It defined their identity as a free people. Even their calendar revolved around the day God delivered them. The anniversary of the Exodus, the Passover, was a day celebrated unlike any other. God delivered Israel in a single day, but they didn’t possess the Promised Land until forty years later. Did you know that the entire journey from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land was supposed to take eleven days? (Deuteronomy 1:2) But they traveled for forty years! That’s 14,589 days longer than their original ETA. What the heck happened?"

He goes on, "Getting Israel out of Egypt was easy, relatively speaking. Getting Egypt out of Israel was a different story altogether, and I mean that literally. It took one day to get Israel out of Egypt, but it took forty years to get Egypt out of Israel. Why? When you’ve been enslaved for four hundred years, slavery is all you’ve ever known. . . When you’ve been oppressed for four hundred years, oppression has an epigenetic effect. You can’t even imagine a different outcome, a different ending. Parting the Red Sea was simple compared with flipping Israel’s script.


"Just a few weeks after their miraculous deliverance, the Israelites started complaining about the manna. If I remember correctly, manna was a miracle. The Israelites were complaining about a miracle! Unbelievable, right? Not so fast. We fall into the same trap. Isn’t marriage miraculous? Children? The human body? The human mind? I bet you’ve filed a few complaints about each of those."

He continues, "The nation of Israel filed this official complaint: 'We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt and without cost, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. (Numbers 11:5 AMPC) Seriously? It was free because you weren’t. Israel’s problem—our problem—is selective memory. If you remember wrong, it’s downright debilitating."

He then says, "When it comes to historiography, historical revisionism is the practice of reinterpreting past events. We need to put this into practice in our personal lives by remembering things the right way. How? From the far side of the cross! From the far side of the empty tomb! You aren’t defined by the things you’ve done wrong. You are defined by what Christ did right—His righteousness. Jesus didn’t just break the curse at Calvary’s cross; He flipped the script on sin and death forever."

And that's the truth, isn't it?

Yes, yes!





 



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