Fix Your Eyes Upon Jesus

I have been writing a series on the developing Apostasy within the Evangelical Church of our day and which groups and leaders are involved in this apostasy. I have already posted Part 3 and am still working on part 4. But, before I continue, I would like to step aside and remind ourselves something extremely important and critical.


As watchmen, it is so easy to get too focussed on issues of heresy, warnings, falsehood, etc. I do not believe a watchman can simply focus only on these things because one aspect of a watchman is to watch, pray, inform, warn, equip  but just as important (as part of equipping) is to encourage, motivate and point people to look to Jesus. Let's face it that without Jesus we are nothing and without Him we can achieve nothing.


So I want to step to one side, take "time-out" and remind us of how wonderful
and great Jesus is. He is the wonderful lamb of God that was willing to take our place suffering the consequences of our sin, being slaughtered in our place because He loves us SO MUCH. He then was victorious over the grave and lives forever more.


There is a song I sometimes sing, whenever I realise I need to refocus on Jesus:


"turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. Then the things of Earth, will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace"


So simple and yet so profound. This was probably taken from Hebrews 12:2


"looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."


All of us face many trials in this world (including unbelievers). We were never meant to have an easy life because we contain sinful souls and imperfect sin stained bodies that are dying with every day. But, when we believers focus on Jesus who is from everlasting to everlasting, who is perfect in every way, who has laid down His life so that we can also have eternal life and when we consider that this life is just temporal and we have a Heaven to go to, where we can be in the presence of Our glorious Saviour for eternity with bodies which will have changed into perfection - our struggles in this life pale into insignificance "in the light of His glory and grace".


This takes me to Romans 8: 18
 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us"


If we consider that God has saved for all eternity the repentant sinner who has accepted Jesus as their Saviour and been born-again, at that very point they receive Jesus. He is living within us and stirs our heart to worship and serve Him, to focus on Him rather than the things of this Earth. Nothing will separate us from God's wonderful love


Romans 8:38-39
"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."


Can we keep our minds so focussed on God and the love of Christ and not get weighed down by the things of this Earth? Well, if we focus our minds too much on our problems, and worry about them, we will be weighed down.


However, we are encouraged that whenever these things get us down to meditate on Jesus. Who He is, what He has done, How glorious He is, His victory over satans dark kingdom and the door He has opened to his glorious kingdom. We have victory through the blood of Jesus.


Romans 8:37
"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us"


So should suffering get us down? Not if we correctly fix our eyes upon Jesus and His words.


Romans 8:32
"He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"


So what can we do to focus on Jesus?


Philippians 4:8
 "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things."


Although this verse was focussing on the things within Paul's ministry, we can equally apply these things when thinking about Jesus, but can be applied in a much greater way.


Let us focus on how the angels worshipped Jesus in the book of Revelation to help us in our worship of Jesus. For example "holy, holy, holy" "the lamb who was slain" "who was and is and is to come" etc.


Then "seek those things which are above, not those things on Earth"


Colossians 3:1-3
"If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.  For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."


Many of the problems we have with apostasy is because our focus is on the wrong things. It could be the charismatic teacher and teachings, experiences etc.


We should be focussed on Jesus and on HIS WORDS (as revealed through the Bible) and NOT teachers. Teachers are fallible, Jesus IS NOT!!! 


So, the apostasy surrounding us is because believers have been too focussed and dependant or BRAIN WASHED by “powerful personalities” soaking up EVERYTHING they say as if these leaders are God Himself.

Part of our worshipping Jesus and focussing on Him is to be Bereans, ie going back to the Bible and prayer (focussing on Jesus alone) and  check out (for ourselves) what these preachers are saying. If we all did all these things there would probably be far less chance of apostasy.


I will add more later.