Eyes Off Me

word:BELIEVE

Luke 24.25-26: “(Jesus) said to them, ‘How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Christ have to suffer these things (crucifixion) and then enter his glory?’”

John 1.7: “(John) came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.”

It is so easy for us, as humans, to get off focus and forget the things that are true; yet it is through us, as humans, that others come to know God, by his spirit.

1] Why do we get distracted?  Not only distracted, but easily distracted?

I have watched people take time off from going to church.  I find myself all too frequently taking breaks from reading my Bible and from engaging in the truth and prayer.  It is in those moments that I get stung by Jesus’ words, “How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe…”  It’s when I choose to not participate that I get distracted from the things of God.  I will always contend that we don’t get distracted from the things of God, but instead we choose to not participate with the things of God and then find ourselves distracted with the things of the world.

2] How do we show others who God is?

I find that in those moments that I choose to walk away from the things of God, it is because I am thinking only of myself, which coincidentally hurts others in my life.  Yet, in my most “spiritual” moments I can be thinking only of myself, striving and working to be the man and leader that God has created me to be.  And in that circumstance nothing changes, I still am in a place of thinking only of myself, still in a place that can hurt others in my life.

Why?  Because it is not about me.  I am saved, made new, made right, and set free.  I know the truth, I know right and wrong, I know it by the conscience of my heart as it bears down on me.  I don’t need anything else to be pointed out to me.  But others do not know what I know.

I want to be like John the Baptist, one who never loses focus of the truth: that Christ died so that all sins would be washed away, so that all people could be with him.

But they’re not.  And I am.  When I begin to think of others, to love others as the disciple John reminds us we should, they can see Christ, that he loves them, that he cares for them.  I can’t be worried about the eyes on me…