There is a wonderful sense of purpose and joy in focusing our mind and heart on Jesus. When He is the object of our affection and the goal in our mind all the cares of this life fall away. There is sweet communion between us and the Lord and our faith grows as we become, day by day, more like Him.
This is not a natural state and does not happen easily. Our inclination is to never seek God and to be completely self-centered. Even for those of us who have been born again and have the Spirit of the Living God within us, we still struggle with quieting our mind enough to hear His still, small voice. Our eyes remain full of the things we see in this life, our ears still hear those who call us away from God and our hands have a hard time letting go of all those things that seem so big but are actually so very small. All of this is in competition for our attention and our focus and can completely stop us from growing in our relationship to the Lord, if we let it.
Using myself as an example of what not to do, I have been a Christian for more than thirty years and yet it is only in the last year that I have really started to get serious about training my mind to seek God to the exclusion of everything else. I can’t help but think about all of the time that I have wasted and all of the blessings I have missed out on because of my lack of discipline. Even so, God is patient and merciful and has never forsaken me. I sit and write today as a testimony that it is never too late to commit all your ways to Him, and that He is utterly worth it.
You might not be in the habit of quieting your mind and turning your spiritual eyes towards Jesus. If you are like many of us, you were saved but not necessarily told exactly how to go about growing and nurturing your salvation. Even when we are encouraged to have a “quiet time” and read our Bible, unless we have first sought the Lord in Spirit and in truth, with our whole heart, our relationship to the Lord is not going to grow like it should. We will very quickly realize that something is missing and that there should be more to this new life in Christ.
I suspect that for many Christians, this is exactly the root of their problem. They know they should be excited about spending time with God but they aren’t and can’t quite figure out why. For them, the relationship is not a real and dynamic thing with a hugely personal God but a series of steps to be performed on a daily basis. And that is a tragedy. God is real and He is with us always. But unless we train ourselves to really seek Him and decide that we want Him over and above everything else, He will only be as big in our life as we let Him be.
What do I mean by “training” ourselves to seek God? I mean that we must focus, by an act of will over and over again, to praise, honor and pour out our hearts to our Savior. The more we do this, the sweeter the relationship grows and the more we want to know God and to put our trust in Him. We find that there isn’t anything that we can’t take before His throne and in place of our weakness, worry and confusion He gives us peace, joy and purpose. This is the secret that every Christian should know.