Seeking Christ as All

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

The ultimate focus of every believer must be Jesus Christ. This may seem obvious but the kind of focusing I speak of is a consuming one, one that goes beyond the ‘Christian Norm’ of praying, reading Scripture, and worshipping on Sunday mornings. None of these things fully encompass what the Christian so desperately needs and that is to find Christ, for Christ.

We sometimes pay lip service to the notion that God is all we need. Unfortunately our lives often continue to be built on anything but the true Source of life. Do we really desire the Son of God for Himself alone? Or do we mostly look to Him as the One who can deliver us from all of the worries, all of the troubles of our present existence? The Bible does tell us that if we seek the Kingdom of Heaven all other things will be added on to us. But all the other things are worthless if they do not come about as a by-product of our devotion to the Lord.

To do this, to really look to Jesus constantly, sounds impossible. Every human being has responsibilities that do not directly involve worship or at least worship in the conventional sense of the word. But what we are looking for here is far beyond the conventional, far beyond what we do in church once a week. True worship is constant. We endeavor to focus on Jesus in all aspects of our lives. The ultimate goal is to lose ourselves in Him because we want Him to be everything to us. Only in this way can we expect our lives in the flesh to be transformed and given back to us as lives found in Christ.

As in much of the Christian walk the ability to see only Him as the focal point of our spirits does not come instantaneously. It has become a cliché to talk about how the myriad distractions of contemporary existence have made it so difficult for believers to keep God first in their lives. However, it is true. The modern world has indeed become too complex to easily “practice the presence” of God. Still, Jesus Christ is bigger than the world. Our Lord can still be known deeply if we ask for help in focusing on Him and then dare to step out in faith to do it. It begins with taking time to meditate on Jesus and Jesus alone. As we do this He can gradually become greater in our consciousness and the effects of the time we spend with Him begin to be felt in the rest of our life. Gradually we can become aware of Christ in all we perceive and all we know. Ultimately He can become everything to us and with we will experience the singular glory of being intimately identified with God. Then our cups can only run over with His love and we will light the darkness around us.

It is true that we continue see through a glass darkly, such is the penalty of living in a fallen world. The fact remains, however, that we still can be far closer to our God. Even here on earth it is possible beyond what many of us could hope or imagine. The key is our desire, the passion to pursue the Lover of our souls…as He has pursued us.

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