Fix Your Eyes on Jesus - Part 2

Hebrews 12:1–2 NLT

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

Philippians 4:4–8 NLT

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:4–9 NLT

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Ephesians 1:18 NLT

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

Ephesians 1:8 NLT

He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

Ronald Rolheiser quotes from pages 24-31 “The Holy Longing”

The premodern world understood that spirituality is about how we channel our eros and, for them, the path needed to channel it correctly was the path that directed that desire toward God, the path of genuflection)That path, also often became the path of fear and the path of control through, external taboos, prohibitions, and laws.

The premodern world understood that spirituality is about

how we channel our eros and, for them, the path needed to

channel it correctly was the path that directed that desire toward

God, the path of genuflection)That path, also often became the

This had a mixed result, not all of it bad. On the one hand, they lived with a lot more fear, superstition, restriction, and timidity than we do. On the other hand, they had both a social stability and a psychological substantiality that we, for the most part, can only envy. Put more simply, we can look at how they handled their spiritual and erotic energies and consider them legalistic and uptight, but their families and communities held together better than do our own and they were less restless and slept more peacefully than we do, because all those high symbols and restrictions, whatever their dysfunctions, taught them that they were immortal beings, created in God's image, whose every action, however private, was important. They did not have to give themselves their own meaning. Because of this, a real irony perhaps, they suffered less from both depression and inflation than we do.

path of fear and the path of control tl;uQu.gg, external taboos,

prohibitions, and laws. ·

This had a mixed result, not􀇽fjt b<14, On the one hand,

they lived with a lot 􀇾ore fear, superstition, restriction, and timidity

than we do>On the other hand, they had both a social

This had a mixed result, not all of it bad. On the one hand, they lived with a lot more fear, superstition, restriction, and timidity than we do. On the other hand, they had both a social stability and a psychological substantiality that we, for the most part, can only envy. Put more simply, we can look at how they handled their spiritual and erotic energies and consider them legalistic and uptight, but their families and communities held together better than do our own and they were less restless and slept more peacefully than we do, because all those high symbols and restrictions, whatever their dysfunctions, taught them that they were immortal beings, created in God's image, whose every action, however private, was important. They did not have to give themselves their own meaning. Because of this, a real irony perhaps, they suffered less from both depression and inflation than we do.

stability and a psychological substantiality that we, for the most

part, can only envy. Put more simply, we can look at how they

Exposition.

handled their spiritual and erotic energies and consider them legalistic

and uptight, but their families and communities held together

better than do our own and they were less restless and slept more peacefully than we do, because all those high symbols and restrictions, whatever their dysfunctions, taught them that they were immortal beings, created in God's image, whose every action, however private, was important. They did not have to give themselves their own meaning. Because of this, a real irony perhaps, they suffered less from both depression and inflation than we do.

better than do our own and they were less restless and

slept more peacefully than we do because all􀇿 high SY!Jl..hols

and restrictions, whatever their dysfunctions, J:a􀈀ght them that..

they􀈁 we􀈂m􀈃􀈄rtal b􀈅!!!g􀈆 cre.:ited in God's image, whose eveu,:_

􀈇ti􀈈n, however private, was importa11t)They did not have to

Today, whatever our sophistication we are naive about the nature of energy. Unlike Jung, we consider it friendly, as something we need not fear and as something we can manage all on our own, without the help of a God or of external rules and taboos. In fact, we tend to disdain any external force, religious or secular, that would in any way censor or restrict an absolute freedom to let energy flow through us. Obedience and genuflection are not very popular. We want to manage energy all on our own.

The Current Struggle with Christian Spirituality 25

give themselves their own m ean ing.'> Because of this, a real irony

perhaps, they suffered less from both depression and inflation

than we do.

oda ur so histication we are naive about the

Today, whatever our sophistication we are naive about the nature of energy. Unlike Jung, we consider it friendly, as something we need not fear and as something we can manage all on our own, without the help of a God or of external rules and taboos. In fact, we tend to disdain any external force, religious or secular, that would in any way censor or restrict an absolute freedom to let energy flow through us. Obedience and genuflection are not very popular. We want to manage energy all on our own.

n􀈉ture of energ􀈊Unlike Jung, we consider it friendly, as somethmg

w e need not fear and as something we can manage all on

our own, without the help of a God or of e xternal rules and

taboos.,In fact, we tend to disdain any external fo rce, religious

freedom to let energy flow through us. Obedience and genuflection are not very popular. We want to manage energy all on our own.

or secular, that would in any way censor or r estrict an absolute

f:'eedom to l et energy flow through us. Obedience and g en uflection

are not very popular. We want to manage energy all on our

own.

Par tly this is a good and necessary step in human matu r ation

Partly this is a good and necessary step in human maturation and partly it is its opposite. The rejection of any external censor of our actions can be a sign of growing up and it can also be a sign of infantile grandiosity, the child in the high chair, demanding that the world revolve around him or her. In either case, we pay a price for demanding to manage all on our own, mostly in our incapacity to find that fine line between depression and inflation. What this means is that, all on our own outside of the classical social and ecclesial taboos, we invariably fluctuate between being out of touch with the deep source of energy, depression, and not being able to properly contain it, inflation. We are rarely on an even keel, always either too low or too high feeling dead inside or unable to act or sleep properly, because we are too hyper and restless.

and partly it is its opposite. The rejection of any external censor

of our actions can be a sign of growing up and it can also be a

Exposition.

􀈋 ign of infantile grandiosity, the child i n the high chair, demandmg

that the wor ld revolve around him or her. In eith er case, we

Partly this is a good and necessary step in human maturation and partly it is its opposite. The rejection of any external censor of our actions can be a sign of growing up and it can also be a sign of infantile grandiosity, the child in the high chair, demanding that the world revolve around him or her. In either case, we pay a price for demanding to manage all on our own, mostly in our incapacity to find that fine line between depression and inflation. What this means is that, all on our own outside of the classical social and ecclesial taboos, we invariably fluctuate between being out of touch with the deep source of energy, depression, and not being able to properly contain it, inflation. We are rarely on an even keel, always either too low or too high feeling dead inside or unable to act or sleep properly, because we are too

(OPTIONAL) Mostly though, in this struggle, it is depression, feeling dead inside, that is the big problem. Generally speaking, today, in the western world, most of us adults live in a certain chronic depression.How is this to be understood?

pay _a price !or demanding to manage all on our own, mostly in

our mcapacity to find that fine line between depression and inflation.

What this means is that, all on our own outside of the

classical social and ecclesial taboos, we invariably fluc tuate be

􀈌een being out of touch with the deep source of energy, dep ression,

Exposition.

hyper and restless.

and not being able to properly contain it, inflation. We are

rarely on an even keel, always either too low or too high feeling

The balance we are all searching for lies in a proper relationship to energy, especially creative, erotic, spiritual energy-and these are one and the same thing. Spirituality is about finding the proper ways, disciplines, by which to both access that energy and contain it. Our age, in its struggle to grow up and to grow beyond what it considers the rather infantile and legalistic approach to this in the past, has naïvely begun to believe that we in fact understand this energy, that we can control it, and that we need a little, if any, external help in coping with it.

dead inside or unable to act or sleep properly because we' are too

This naivety is, to my mind, one of the major spiritual stumbling blocks of our time. In terms of understanding spiritual energy and its relationship to us we are not unlike an adolescent boy or girl whose body is bursting with hormonal energy and who feels that he or she is up to the task of creatively coping with that tension without any rules or guidance from elders. Such naivety is, as we know, both arrogant and dangerous. (BREAK)

Exposition.

The fires that burn inside us are much more powerful than we naïvely assume. When we neglect to them, thinking that these fires are domestic enough for us to control, we end up either depressed or inflated...

hyper and restless.

...Our culture is too naïve about the power of energy. We see nothing wrong in exposing ourselves to it in all its rawness...

Exposition.

Philippians 4:4 NLT

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!

Exposition

Philippians 4:5 NLT

Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

Exposition

Philippians 4:5-

Philippians 4:6 NLT

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.

Exposition

Philippians 4:7 NLT

Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7 NLT

Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7–8 NLT

Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Exposition

Philippians 4:8 NLT

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Exposition

Philippians 4:8-

Philippians 4:9 NLT

Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Exposition

Ephesians

��gcdiscipleship.com/article-feed/2019/9/2/fixing-our-flittering-eyesZach BarnhartSeptember 2, 2019

Ephesians 1:18 NLT

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.

The Keurig winds down. You grab its offering, switch the lamp on, and take a seat beneath the light.

We so desperately need light and hope in our thoughts every day if we are to endure in this race as followers of Jesus.

The holy Lamp and Light rests in your lap, primed to illuminate your day like the sun that gradually peers through your living room blinds. You find the spot where you last left off, take a sip from your favorite mug, and open the Book. You smile.

You are going to see some horrendous things in this life no matter what. None of us no matter how much we try to comfort ourselves can get away from things that are going to disturb and leave pain and wounds. The question is whether our eyes are actually going to be filled with something equally or surpassingly great and that’s why we fix our eyes on Jesus.

I’m actually going to get this done today.

About twelve verses in, you hear your daughter stirring in the other room. It is almost as if she can detect your desire to embrace spiritual disciplines and has a diabolical plan to break you. Your eyes glance at the baby monitor.

Please, God, hold her off for a little bit longer.

You take a much bigger second sip of coffee, having the feeling you are going to need it. Before returning to your reading, you glance at another screen. This one is small enough to fit into your pocket and smart enough to be your personal assistant. You have missed a few texts and emails, one in particular that seems important to address.

It will only take a second.

After replying, you decide to check your social media feeds. After all, at this point, you are tethered. After some brief scrolling, a three-minute video catches your attention. You watch it. Then another autoplays.

The stirring in the other room turns to roaring.

You look down at the Book in your lap and read, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your way,” ().

Apparently, not today.

I did not invent this story; I retold it from experience. It is a story I have unfortunately played the role of protagonist in far too many times. Maybe you have, too.

We struggle to find and protect unhurried time with the Lord. And there are plenty of factors we try to blame when we fall short, like lack of time or restless infants.

But the real impairment we face in these moments is not primarily an external force; it’s internal. It does not matter where we are or what kind of time we have, if our eyes are not fixed on Jesus, our time in the Word will be hopelessly frustrating.

A key reason we struggle to have meaningful time in God’s Word is because we fail to truly fix our eyes on Christ. Ultimately, we do not want fixed eyes. We want omnipresent eyes.

None of us would admit that we are omnipresent or even that we should be. But the world of push notifications and social media and television tries to sell us that promise: that our eyes can (and need to be) everywhere all the time. These technologies send our eyes into a frenzy, flittering from image to notification to article to game to text. Flittering eyes find it impossible to gaze.

Flittering eyes find it impossible to gaze.

When these distractions come our way from sun up to sun down, our focus splinters. Spiritual disciplines seem better defined as out of reach spiritual ideals. We are prone to wrongfully convict "time" or "busyness" as the culprit. In most cases, time is innocent: we only need to embrace the limitations of our eyes and fix our eyes on Christ.

Proverbs tells us that “the eyes of the Lord are in every place” (). He is all-seeing. But we were not made to be this way. Our eyes are finite, created by God (). Before knowing Christ, we groped in the darkness like a blind man, “like those who have no eyes” ().

But even though the Lord opened our eyes out of blindness and we now walk in his light, our seeing remains “dim” (); we still walk by faith and not sight (). In Christ, our eyes are renewed and healed, but they will never see the way God sees.

In Jesus’s most famous sermon, he tells his audience, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (). Jesus expanded his metaphor from the “heart” in verse 21 to the “eye” in verse 22. In verse 24, he brings his lesson home: that “no man can serve two masters.”

Sinclair Ferguson sums up the passage this way: "Fixing the eye and fixing the heart amount to the same thing—focusing our attention and concentrating all our energies on [Christ].”

It is our all-important eyes, the “lamps of our bodies,” that reveal the make-up of our inner life. Our eyes reveal who (or what) our true master is. Looking back turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. Looking down nearly drowned Peter. Undivided attention matters to God.

The more we fix our eyes on Jesus, the more evidence we have that our eyes are indeed fixed.

One pastor helped me understand that if we want to see Jesus, we must “stare at his glory until we see it.” We cannot allow ourselves to be tossed to and fro by every wind of distraction.

But how do we focus in a world bent on distracting us? Think back to our opening story. What steps could have been in place that might have changed the trajectory of those events?

“I can’t seem to focus” is not a design flaw. God has wired us for beholding (). A more likely reason we struggle to fix our eyes is that we put ourselves in environments that tempt us to look at everything else the world wants us to see.

The solution is simple. We need to become masters over anything that tempts us to look away from Christ. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the story above was having my phone with me in those early moments of the morning.

The more we choose distance from our devices, the more likely we are to not fall into harmful “double vision.” I would warn against the use of digital Bibles altogether for these moments, as they only create the opportunity for distraction.

However, if we feel the need to use devices for Bible study, we should take steps to encourage focus, such as turning off notifications, enabling “Do Not Disturb,” and making better use of tools like iPhone’s “Downtime.” Go as far as disabling the internet connection if that is what it takes.

Our story included the scenario of studying God’s Word with a young child in the home, a challenge many of us know well. Turning off our phones does not exactly make for serenity in every case. If there’s any hope of us getting the world turned off, many of us need our family’s help.

One way my wife serves me is sacrificing her time and energy to take care of our daughter, giving me the space I need to study God’s Word. She knows how hard it can be to memorize Scripture or study a passage while being crawled on. She knows that some mornings I need to go to the office a little earlier to fit that time in.

And I can serve her in return by offering her the same kind of time. Going on "Dad duty" to give her the space she needs to hear from the Lord is one of the greatest ways I can be a godly leader in my home.

If your kids are older, what a great opportunity this is to teach them about the importance of time with God! Watching you prioritize your time in Scripture will help them begin to see the importance of the Word in their own lives.

A fatal error I made in our opening story was not only getting distracted, but letting distraction be an indicator that I should give up for the day. Let’s face it, “quiet time” is hard to come by. Distraction is sometimes inevitable.

But when we find ourselves distracted, we don’t have to wave the white flag. Distraction is actually an perfect opportunity to come to the Lord in prayer.

Paul Miller encourages us to come to prayer “overwhelmed with life”:

“Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. . . . The very things we try to get rid of—our weariness, our distractedness, our messiness—are what get us in the front door! That’s how the gospel works. That’s how prayer works.”

One of the best ways to fix our eyes on Jesus is to admit our eyes have wandered, and to ask for his help to focus. Pray about your racing thoughts about the day ahead. Confess your distraction. Thank God that he does not get distracted from your needs. Bring your requests to him so that you might focus.

There is beauty in beholding Christ, but it is impossible to get a glimpse of his glory if our attention is scattered.

John Newton said he found “that to keep my eye simply upon Christ, as my peace, and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling." That is the day that God is moving us towards; the day when we will see him, our eyes meeting for the first time, as we stand face-to-face with our King.

Until then, we are invited to fix our eyes. To have them open and searching for his presence and for his coming again soon.

Zach Barnhart lives in the greater Austin, TX area with his wife, Hannah, and their daughter, Nora. Zach serves as Pastor of Students and Spiritual Formation of Northlake Church. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is in pursuit of a Master of Theological Studies degree from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can follow Zach on or check out blog.

Fix Your Eyes on Jesus - Part 2

We are so affected by what we give our attention to. What have you been giving yours to?

1) You cannot control all energy - so be cautious what you open yourself up to.

Notes:

Fixing Our Flittering Eyes

A FAMILIAR TALE

THE FALSE PROMISE OF OMNIPRESENCE

JESUS ON OUR EYES

GETTING OUR EYES FIXED

TURN THE WORLD OFF

HELP YOUR FAMILY FOCUS ON CHRIST

COME AS YOU ARE

FIX YOUR EYES