STAY FIXED ON JESUS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our Apostle and High Priest.

Hebrews 3:1

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Through my more than 30 years of Bible teaching, relating God’s word to His people in a way that helps them know His expectations for living, one key truth has emerged.

Satan is always trying to distract the people of God from the scriptures, the leading of the Holy Spirit, and ultimately His will for their lives. And he is very skilled at it.

Many of you reading this are probably giving me an “Amen” right now based on your own personal experience. Others might only begin thinking about this now that I bring it up but one thing is for sure. There is a war at hand for control of our thoughts between the Lord and the enemy.

Which one is winning you over?

This is the important question we all need to ask.

Now, this matter isn’t just a modern day issue. We can say this with confidence because as we see in today’s opening verse of Hebrews, chapter 3, the letter’s author is writing on the matter of focusing one’s thoughts in the right direction as he writes to the first century Jewish Christians. Look again at his words here:

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our Apostle and High Priest.

Did you catch the main exhortation found in this verse?

It’s “fix your thoughts on Jesus”.

Not just some of your thoughts as if it's proper to have a division of attention in our thinking. No, Christian believers are to fix their thoughts on Jesus and Him alone.

Not on current events or sports or entertainment outlets.

Not on politics.

Not on your workplace and the work you do.

Not on happenings within the family or the church.

Not on your phone, tablet, or any other form of technology you might use to play games, surf the internet, or play video games.

Not on difficulties or hardships that might spawn feelings of anxiety, stress, worry, fear, or depression.

And definitely not on any number of sinful behaviors a person could engage in.

Did I mention there were a lot of ways the devil can take away our concentration from where it needs to be?

It’s not easy, right?

So what do we do? How do we ever keep all our thoughts fixed on Jesus?

As Christians, the answer is always staying true to who we are, a people who are in Christ and expected to live like Him and when we think about Jesus, we see a man who never allowed Himself to be sidetracked or diverted from carrying out what His Father wanted. Our Savior was laser-focused on the mission He was sent to earth to carry out (the definition of an apostle), to be the ultimate High Priest who offered up the final sacrifice ever needed for atonement, namely Himself, in order to save anyone who would believe in Him.

Jesus remained undeterred in living the life He was meant to live because He always fixed His thoughts on His Father God.

After His mission was complete, conquering death and the grave as He was resurrected to life from the tomb, Jesus gave a new mission to all those who would choose to follow Him, those who would be His disciples. Here’s what He told all His followers to do:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

This is the calling of every Christian, a calling known as the Great Commission. It is to be our main goal each and every day. Satan knows this and he wants nothing more than to take the thoughts of a believer elsewhere and in my view, he’s succeeding far more than failing in our day and age. We should be working hard to not be one of his success stories.

How can we do that?

By ensuring that we, like He was, are centered and engaged fully on the mission He gave us to make disciples of all nations.

At the end of every day, we should be able to look back and see that we shared the good news of Jesus through the Gospel with someone. Further, we need to make sure we are exercising spiritual self care, which is simply investing time every day to learn more about who Jesus was with a commitment to being more and more like Him.

We can only do that if we fix our thoughts on Him, the One who surrendered everything so we could be saved. The least we can do is to set aside the many distractions that seek to steal our attention away from the One we should be preoccupied with.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.