I was reading from My utmost from His Highest. Today's was so good! I knew it applied to me, and I know many have said they struggle with concentrating on God. So I'm going to paste some of it in here!
The great difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and it is His blessings that make it difficult. Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect - Narrow all your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ. "Look unto Me."
Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God. The very thing we look for, we shall find if we will concentrate on Him. We get preoccupied and sulky with God, while all the time He is saying - "Look up and be saved." The difficulties and trials - the casting about in our minds as to what we shall do this summer, or to-morrow, all vanish when we look to God.
Rouse yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter if there are a hundred and one things that press, resolutely exclude them all and look to Him. "Look unto Me," and salvation is, the moment you look.
Isn't that awsome? That was really what I needed when I read it! I tell you this book hits every nail! I love it! ( although I am excited about the 1 Peter book! ) Pray for me as often as you can!
Rachel
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Let the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts (and the posts on this blog) be acceptable to our Lord!
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3 comments:
Chow, ;)
Whats weird is I remember that chapter from when I went through that book a couple years ago! I guess, it stood out to me then too. We sure tend to twist things around, don't we? Instead of Gods blessings drawing us closer to Him through gratitude, etc. we allow those very things to be what drag us away from Him! It'd kind of be like if I gave you a new four-wheeler and instead of thanking me for it and going four-wheeling WITH me, you would spend all your time on it and say you want to enjoy it all alone! I would be pretty annoyed with you! ;) Thanks for posting a reminder of Who I should be thanking and spending time with. Love you!
Chrystal
I started making a post, but as I began I realized I was saying the exact same thing you guys-- excuse me-- "girls" said, so I decided to comment instead. I've been reading through Isaiah, and not finding much I might add (maybe I bit off more than I could chew!) just a lot of proclamations of judgement. So I started over again. I didn't have to go far. In 1:3 God gives the reason for His judgement. "The ox knoweth his master's crib: but Isreal doth not know, my people doth not consider."
God's quarrel with Isreal was that they had taken His blessing and forgotten Him, very much like the four-wheeler illustration Chrystal used. (Good illustration by the way. It drove the point home!:) The next chapters-- and it really is chapter after chapter after chapter!-- goes on to list everything Isreal has placed before God and then goes through and systematically describes how God plans to take them all away. It's almost scary to think that He can and will take away everything I place before him, but I guess He is a jealous God. Not because He's mean and nasty, but because He knows He's the only thing that can truly satisfy me, and if I persist in letting other things compete with Him, He has no choice but to remove them from my life.
Well, that's all I had to say. I'm still not sure how it all applies. Anyone who reads this can pray that God starts to make some connections for me because --although I'm finding some good things in the Bible-- I'm having trouble making practical applications to my life (and not because there's a lack of problems!) Pray that I would be sensitive to God's conviction.
Thanks for the post and comment,
Mike.
I def. know what your talking about!thats exactly how I feel most times. Like I know it's a good passage, but I am having a hard time really understanding it and applying it.
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