What is your daily focus in life?
By
Nick Bibile
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require
of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)
Justice – do to what is right. Love kindness – steadfast love. Walk humbly – walking with God is humility.
In the New Testament, Jesus reduces all of these
requirements to bare minimum.
But seek first His kingdom and
His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Mat 6:33)
We think the moment we find
Christ the seeking is finished. In
reality seeking begins when we find Christ.
Our old nature was to run away from God. Born again, we want to grow in
Christ. Many are seeking Christ for
wrong reasons. What is your favorite
verse? Jeremiah 29:11 (Example) Many
will use this verse looking for a successful life on this earth, they think if
you have a lot of money and material things, God is blessing me. Then the poor
Christians will also focus on physical blessings rather than spiritual
blessings. Earthly blessings are temporary, Job’s earthly blessings were destroyed in one
day. When it comes to blessing, Jesus said in
Matthew 5:3-11 This is in total contrast
to the blessings what you hear today.
When Jesus said, seek first
(proton in Gk) It’s priority, above all else. Seeking something painfully
and with all our strength. We are
to seek the kingdom of God, what is the kingdom of God? In a kingdom there is a
king, we are to seek the king and his rule, and obey his rules. Jesus told Pilate Jesus
answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. (John 18:36) Therefore Pilate said to
Him, “So You
are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been
born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. (John 18:37)
Once you have a spiritual birth,
you come from Satan’s kingdom to God’s Kingdom.
Again, the devil *took Him to a
very high mountain and *showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory;
9 and he said to Him, “All these things I will
give You, if You fall down and [c]worship
me.” 10 Then Jesus
*said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is
written, ‘You
shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (Mat 4:8-10)
Now we are in God’s kingdom, our
daily focus should be to fix our eyes on our King Jesus
fixing
our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith,
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)
Original Greek text for fixing our eyes has the Gk
word, aphorao, taking the eyes off from one object to
another.
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. 16 For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and
the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
17 The world is passing away, and also
its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-16)
4 You
adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility
toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself
an enemy of God. (James 4:4)
But
whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the
sake of Christ. 8 More
than that, I count all things to be loss [c]in
view of the surpassing value of [d]knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord, [e]for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that
I may gain Christ, (Philip 3:7-8)
In the 16th century
Martin Luther tried to reduce the Christian life into one single idea.
Christians should live their lives before the face of God. (Coram Deo) This
was his theme in life. Our final goal is
to seek God’s face, the one who created us, the one whom we are worshipping, the one who died for us.
The Old Testament Benediction
(Numbers 6:22-26)