What We See vs What God Sees
One of my church’s favourite songs to sing together on a Sunday is Phil Wickham’s Battle Belongs. It came out in 2021 and has become something of a modern classic already, because the words of this song are so powerful and give us such hope in the midst of our battles.
Listen to how the song begins:
When all I see is the battle, You see my victory
When all I see is the mountain, You see a mountain moved
God's Perspective: Victory Beyond the Battles
That’s a very hopeful thought for us today. There’s a difference between our limited view of events as they unfold, and God’s ability to foresee how things will end! So when we just see a battle raging in our lives, God already sees how these difficulties are going to end in victory for us. And when all we can see is a mountain, God sees already how that mountain will be moved to make way for us.
This type of thinking comes from Romans 8, where we learn that God uses all things for the good of those who love Him. And so even the mountains and the battles in our lives will be used for our good, if we are in Christ!
There are some similar words in the second verse:
When all I see are the ashes, you see the beauty
When all I see is the cross, God You see the empty tomb
Powerful! We might just see a pile of ashes, but God sees beauty – this comes from Isaiah 61:3 where God promises to “bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes”. And of course ultimately, when everyone was looking at Jesus dead on a cross thinking that the battle had been lost, God could already see the empty tomb, where victory would be won a few days later.
Trust God: Transforming Defeats into Victory
And so my friends, do you need to look at your situation differently today? Perhaps you are facing a battle right now, or a mountain that doesn’t seem to be budging, or perhaps you are staring at a pile of ashes wondering why something in your life came to nothing.
Can you, today, trust that God can see what you can’t see? Can you trust that God sees the victory, because He is turning your ashes into a beautiful crown?
This is what God does best. He takes what we think are defeats and turns them around. What we need is the faith to see Him doing it.
I pray that you will hold onto this thought today, and walk tall because you believe that God sees great things in your future that you can’t see in this moment.
