Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus
There’s a wise adage that says, “What has your attention has you”. So the question is really obvious; what has your attention today? If our focus is anywhere other than on Jesus Christ, we are captured by something other than Him. Satan is a master of distraction. Since the dawn of time he has been parading a feast of temptation before our eyes (Genesis 3:1-6). He doesn’t care if you ever go his way; he’s content to just keep your eyes off of Jesus. We make it too easy for him.
I’ve been struck lately with a preoccupation regarding the concept of mediocrity. It continues to come into my mind as I see evidence of it all around me and within my own life. Jesus gave His opinion of mediocrity when He said that He detested lukewarm faith. Using strong language, He said that mediocre Christians made Him vomit (Revelation 3:16). We’ve bought into a teaching that says as long as we say a certain prayer that Christ will welcome us into His Kingdom with open arms. But Jesus makes it plain that unless we have a “hot” faith, He will spit us out. This is not a picture of the open arms we have been taught to expect.
I touched on this a bit before (see “Take Action”), but with the New Year now underway, I think it’s important to emphasize the value of intentional living over the next twelve months. How will you be different and more like Jesus when December rolls around? What will you have done to glorify Him as you look back over this year? One thing is certain, if you don’t plan how you will get somewhere you’ve never been, you will never arrive. Spiritual growth doesn’t happen by accident. You don’t wake up one day and discover you are a disciple of Jesus. Believing in Christ is easy. Becoming the person He created you to be is difficult and requires an incredible amount of work on your part.
How could you better serve Christ in the coming year? In what ways could you intentionally change your life that would allow you to walk more closely with Him? It should be our goal to always be striving to look more like Jesus, to walk more closely in His footsteps. This won’t just happen, we must purposefully decide to seek Him more fully and make a plan for how to do that. If we want our relationship with Christ to grow more in the next year, if we want to live our lives fully devoted to Him, it must begin with a conscious decision and disciplined follow-through. I’ve got three ideas to help you in this endeavor.
I read a great quote from Steven Furtick recently: “Sin offers a temporary fix for your pain – while it slowly destroys your purpose.” When the going gets tough, it seems the tough give in to sin. It is a paradox how those of us who know that comfort and peace can only be found in Christ can be so quick to lean on the crutch of sin when something breaks in our lives. Our first instinct should be Jesus in everything, yet instead we run purposefully into the arms of the enemy. This makes no sense and only emphasizes how weak and desperate we are for a Savior to rescue us from our penchant for self-destruction.