We Choose to Respond

We are not victims of fate, we are victims of our own choosing. Every moment we make choices and we find ourselves in situations resulting from our choices. We don’t have control over what circumstances we are born into or what things happen to us, but no one else is either. We are only able to control how we respond to the things that happen to us. No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we do not have to be victims to that situation. Viktor Frankl, a holocaust surviver, observes that the one thing he could always control was his mind. He describes how choosing to control his thoughts helped him survive in his book A Man’s Search for Meaning.Our situation will always be unique to us, but we always have the ability to control our mind and reactions.

You are not responsible for the stimulus that happens to you, you are only responsible for your response.

The way we choose to respond on a regular basis trains our natural response to stimulus. If a stranger walks up to us and hits us in the arm, we might react and get upset. If our best friend of thirty years walks up and hits us in the arm, we will usually be able to stop ourselves long enough to ask why. Because we have trained ourselves to trust our friend, we are  more likely to let him explain there was a giant wasp on our arm than we would from a stranger. If we train ourselves to listen to God, we will hear Him even when a giant wasp is vying for our attention. We should train ourselves to trust God so that every stimulus that happens to us causes us to run to Him.

Who you are determines how you see the world, and how you teach yourself to see the world changes who you are.

The world is not static, and we are not impartial observers. We see the world the way we train ourselves to see the world. As we grow and change, we will see the world differently. We can choose to see the world how God sees it - a planet filled with the image of God that has been incredibly damaged by sin - or we can see it our own way. What we think about and how we react to things that happen to us can affect how we see the world, but we are still in control of our perceptions. As we train ourselves to see the world a certain way, we will see it more that way and we will continue along the path we lead ourselves in developing who we are.