Focus on the Prize, the true Treasure

 I have a confession to make, every once in a while, maybe once in a blue moon, I let my ADD get the best of me. (laying on the sarcasm pretty thick) So often, I find myself engaging in a great conversation or a thought provoking moment to myself and then...Squirrel!! (Up reference for those not inclined to animated movies, if that is the case, I am praying for you!)  Even as I write this blog, you can see rabbit trails developing... ok, here we go, 1...2....3.... focus!

 This disposition to get distracted does not stay isolated in my mind, but it rears its ugly head in my spiritual walk.  So often things are grabbing at my attention, my loyalties, or worse the throne of my heart.  I fall into this trap that things of this world are greater than God.  Maybe money will make me truly happy, or this relationship, or this position will give me significance and slowing the power and the presence of God diminishes in my mind.  He becomes an afterthought, my time with Him becomes too much of a burden, and His will and plan for my life seems like it really isn't that great.  Then wham!  I fall on my face, I find myself in a huge bind, or my heart gets shattered into a thousand pieces.  Then I come crawling back to God like the prodigal son and He rushes to me with open arms!  I hate it when I lose focus and when I believe the lie that this world has more to offer than the loving, gracious, and amazing God of the universe.  He truly is the giver of all good gifts. (James 1:17)

So how do I stay focused on Him?  I wanted to draw your attention to Philippians 3:12-14:

"¹² I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. ¹³ No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us."

 I believe this focus originates with a humble spirit.  Paul, who is one of my spiritual heroes, was completely honest with his spiritual walk, he had not arrived yet.  In my spiritual highs, I have a tendency to get complacent, or down right prideful.  The great deception is that we can do things on our own or that we don't need God.  In reality, we are so dependent on God, it isn't even funny.  He hold us together(Col 1:17), He gives us breath and life(Isaiah 42:5), and He knows the future and His plans always come to pass(Isaiah 46:9-10).  Basically, nothing would exist without God and He has the power to do what He pleases.  Pride is saying that God is a liar and we can do things on our own.  Everything falls short of God, money, power, relationships, jobs, anything this world can offer.  When we have the right perspective, He gets much bigger and everything else, including ourselves gets much smaller.

 With humility can sometimes come the feeling of condemnation.  This is the second part of focus, forgetting what is behind us, or our past.  When we humble ourselves, we give the opportunity for guilt of sin to beat us while we are down.  However this should not be the case, for Christ died for sins once and for all, (1 Peter 3:18) and there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).  Sin no longer has any power over us because of Christ (Romans 6:6-11) and now we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Our focus can not be on the sins and mistakes of our past.  This diminishes the redemptive work of Christ.  We need to claim the victory that Christ has once and for all defeated sin and when we loosen the chains of our past, we can strive and reach for the future that we have in Christ as new creations.

 So when we understand who God truly is and what Christ has truly done for us, our focus hones.  We see that the world has nothing to offer us in comparison to God and that our lives have been forever changed through Christ and we are sealed by His gracious sacrifice and the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Eph 1:13-14)  You see, the prize is Jesus, He is the ultimate treasure.  He is where we find acceptance, love, worth, hope, joy, peace, and salvation.  He is like the treasure in the field that the someone finds and goes and sells everything they have to buy that field. (Matthew 13:44)  If He isn't the prize, we are chasing after things that are fading, that will disappoint, and that will never satisfy. (1 John 2:17, John 6:35) 

 Paul had the right perspective, he knew that he would never achieve the prize until he saw Jesus face to face.  Everything on this earth, all his accomplishments meant nothing to him, (Phil 3:4-11) and he focused on what was to come, on the realities of heaven. (Col 3:1-4)  I need to follow Paul's example and I pray the same for you as well.  

 Father, I pray that our focus will be on You and You alone.  I know that this world has nothing to offer me.  I have tried to find satisfaction apart from You and I ended up empty.  Please give us the strength and the ability to focus on You.  Thank You for revealing how awesome You are and how much You love us.  Thank You that You accept us with open arms, that You love us just as we are, and that You have an amazing plan for us to experience true life in You.  You are awesome God and I can not praise You enough.  Thank you for allowing me to speak and I pray that You would change our hearts and help us focus on You.  I love You, Father.  Amen.

May the peace of Jesus reign in your hearts,

Daniel     

You have never seen a love like this

Greetings!

Long time no see, however...

Love is in the air.  I am not talking about the giddy, bubbly love that men and women experience around Spring and Summer time, I mean it is literally in the air.  Take a breath.  That is love!  Can you control whether you will take your next breath?  I will never know when I will take my last breath.  My life is being held by someone greater than me, and that is a sobering thought.  Is there anything I can do to add a day to my life?  Luke 12:25 says, "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"  So whether we want to admit it or not, our life hangs in a balance that we have no control over.  So what sustains us?  God's love and mercy.

Ephesians 2:4-5 NLT- But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)

I want to rest on how truly amazing God's love is.  I, along with many other people, have been burned by love.  You may be experiencing this right now, someone you loved has betrayed you and taken your feeling of affection towards them and crushed them.  Some of you may feel unlovable, or that love is never to be trusted.  Some of you may have experienced love, but it was based on conditions, it may have been based on how much fun you had and when the fun stopped so did the love.  Whatever your experiences are with love, I am going to ask you to do me a favor.  Don't look at the God's love with the same lens of all the experiences that you had with love and allow God to reveal how much He truly loves you, and how much He truly values you!  

God love embodies so many things, but I want to focus on a few amazing qualities.  God's love is timeless - Ephesians 1:4-5 - "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." Allow that to sink in.  Before He formed the earth and the stars, God saw you and loved you!  It was not because you did anything to earn that love, it was completely based on God's choice to love you.  He wanted to love you and it brought Him great pleasure to shower His love on you!

God loves us just as we are. - Romans 5:8 - "But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." Christ accepts you as you are. (Romans 15:7)  Even when were enemies of God,(sinners) He sent Jesus to die for us because He loved us.  You don't need to reach a spiritual level, or read the Bible enough, or sin less to earn God's love.  It is unconditional.

The bond of love between you and God is inseparable. - Romans 8:38-39 - "And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
That pretty much speaks for itself.

God went to great lengths to love you and pursue you.  - Romans 8:31-32 - "What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?  Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?"
You are that valuable to God that He would allow His son to die for you.  Do not allow anyone on this earth to determine your value or make you feel worthy.  The God of the Universe saw you before He created everything, loved you, and said you were so valuable that He would send Jesus to die for you.

God loves us because of choice not because of need. - 1 Chronicles 29:14 - "But who am I, and who are my people, that we could give anything to you? Everything we have has come from you, and we give you only what you first gave us!"  God doesn't need us to love Him.  He is the originator of love. (1 John 4:19) This is so important, because our love is reactive.  We love because someone loved us; our parents, our spouses, our friends, whomever it is has showed us love and we respond by showing it back to them, or we show them love and they give it back to us.  However, our love knows limits and in most cases, if rejected enough we will stop loving.  God doesn't need our love to continue loving us, but He graciously and greatly pours His love out not because we deserve it or so that we will reciprocate it back to Him as if He needed it.  His love is completely selfless. 

So what is our response to this amazing love?  Do you think it would be wicked to have this love revealed to us and reject it?  We do it every day though, we look for other things to validate us, to find satisfaction, to find love, and we fail to realize that the floodgates of pure, unmerited, and genuine love are waiting to be opened, if we just say yes, and accept the love that God is so readily desiring to pour out on us.  

Your quest for true love can stop here.  You are at a crossroads.  You can respond to God's love by accepting it as a free gift and fall at His feet and worship Him.  Or you can continue this foolish quest to find love, worth, or life in the shift sands of this world.  I pray with all of my heart that you would taste and see that the Lord is good and that He loves more than you can possible imagine.

Love in Christ,

Daniel