This semester I have started taking a class called Perspectives. It’s a class that was started in the 70’s and is hosted all over the U.S. and the world. One of there slogans is “Prepared to be ruined for the ordinary”, and my experience has been exactly that! Speakers from all over are brought in and teach along the curriculum of our Perspectives textbook, which is a collection of chapters and articles from over 120 books by brilliant theologians! Every Thursday we meet at a local church and learn about the world Christian movement. My mind has been blown every week with all the knowledge I’ve been soaking up!! I’ve learned about God’s heart for the world, the evangelism of the gospel, and where this leaves me as a follower of Jesus Christ. My heart has continued to be changed by the gospel. I’ve been learning what it means to love God with all of my mind! The first week the speaker was talking about how a common thread throughout the whole Bible is God’s love for “all nations” and the world. He explained how he devoted a year to reading through the whole bible and highlighting every time it talked about the world, or the whole earth, or the nations. He said he went through several highlighters that year and discovered that God’s heart for the nations is reiterated countless times in Scripture for a reason. The gospel is meant to be brought to every tongue, tribe, and nation, and we are responsible, as followers of Jesus, to fulfill that mandate from God. We are blessed to be a blessing to the world (Genesis 12:1-3). It has been incredible starting the One Year Bible in January of this year and already seeing exactly what he was talking about and it’s only February! I can’t fully explain everything that I’ve learned but I can tell you that it is one of the greatest investments of time and money I’ve ever spent! I would highly encourage you to look up on perspectives.org to see if there is a class near you. Oh gosh… I just reread that last sentence in a cheesy announcers voice…. there is a class near YOOU (cue Uncle Sam pointing at you)! I promise I’m not being paid to be a commercial for Perspectives! I guess my closing statement would be that God has used Perspectives to super charge my spiritual growth and I would love for people to experience how Jesus is transforming me in ways I didn’t know were possible.
