This Is My World

[HKHaugan]

This is My World

On one news channel there’s a program called Watter’s World. Jesse Watters is a kind of ‘tongue-in-cheek’ interviewer who stops people on the street and gives them simple questions to answer which usually tend to reveal their lack of knowledge. He does it in a non-threatening way with a disarming kind of smile as he speaks. At the end of several interviews he will look in the camera with that mild hint of humor and at someone just interviewed as he sweeps his extended arm toward the surrounding area and says, “This is my world.” He’s referring to the immediate area, it’s people and his personal experience as he meets them.

Now I invite you to do the same thing right where you are at this moment and where you will be today as you move around in that part of your personal geography. I’m serious. Actually physically get up, see where you are, look at the people around you and say ‘This is my world.’ Is it the store, a friend’s home, or home alone, or with family, the gas station, your car, a doctor’s office, anticipating an appointment, in an argument, daydreaming and on and on? This is your world and it’s also my world. You can be alone at your computer like I am right now or watching TV or talking to someone. Well, just stop and sweep your arm around and say ‘This is my world.’ This is not a stupid self conscious action. It really has a purpose. Just do it and tell me what happens.

If you are like me you will feel the result from the physical action. It really is my world, I possess a piece of the action. I am consciously a part of what is going on around me. For that one swift moment there is a self consciousness that affirms you are a living breathing reality that is the unique image of God in you saying, “I am” and this really is my part of a living experience in a world of self that I have been given to be alive and real and productive and creative.

Go ahead. Sweep your arm again and say “This is my world.” It’s a real gift from God to know who and what you are. You have been appointed to be a manager and guardian of this part of the universe in which you are a living breathing ‘I am.’ The Bible even exalts it further by calling you a temple and not only a temple but a temple of the Holy Spirit and that you are therefore, sacred, which means one set apart to be like God (1Cor.3:16).

Further, He has given us an appointment to be an ambassador in that part of the world in which we sweep our arm. Look at your Bible and sweep your hand across it. It’s your ambassador’s manual. It covers all your appointments, what to say and how to say it. It is the only manual, a faith manual, that prepares you for the unexpected, that which you didn’t plan on and didn’t think could happen, should happen or would happen. Because that is your world in every next moment. You live in the unpredictable and only faith can allow you to move into the unknown with assurance. The Bible is also your attitude manual. It moves you from fear to faith because the spirit of fear is the world’s spirit that infects our attitude and you have been given the Spirit of sonship by our real Father that saves us from the slavery of fear (Rom.8:15).

One more time. Sweep your arm around again and say “This is my world.” (“God so loved the world...Jn.3:16.”) But this time add, “Thank you Lord, for this amazing gift. I praise your name.”