John 15:5, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing’.
There are many distractions and a lot of wasting of time, here and there through our day. Sometimes, we struggle with worldly attractions. Let us focus on God’s Word. As we know the song ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full into His wonderful face’ – The person who wrote this song is Helen Howarth Lemmel. This hymn was inspired by an article ‘Focused’, by a missionary lady, Isabella Lilias Trotter who worked among women in Algeria. Our life by itself is so dead and lifeless, until the son of righteousness rises on us. In the same way, how the Sun, when it rises, gives beauty to everything that is on the Earth. It is only when we fully and wholly turn towards Jesus, then His light comes through and shines through us and gives life and beauty to us. Jesus says,
- I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit.
- Apart from Me, you can do nothing.
Apart from Me, you can do nothing: We cannot bear fruits from our lives without Him. Our Christian life starts with having faith in Him, and goes on with doing the works of righteousness by faith.
1 Timothy 6:18,19, ‘Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed’.
Good works – Sometimes God convicts us to do good works, to set aright the things that we’ve done, like a restitution or apologizing to a person when we speak rudely to a person etc. Every act of setting right after sinning is also a good work. Every good work, we do it by the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting God that He is going to give us the power and His grace and the right words to say it.
Matthew chapters 5,6,7 is about Jesus teachings to His disciples. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit, one can be a disciple of Jesus, not by his own strength.
There’s another article on ‘Godliness’, the things that are not counted as ‘godliness’ are,
- The things the unbelievers and heathen people can do, the things – we as well as the unbelievers do, cannot be classified as ‘godliness’.
- There are some characters in godly people which we do not find in them, consistently, every day.
- When we ‘see the true faith and true eagerness in a person, towards God and serving others’ and we desire that and we wish we could also attain those qualities, because this desiring, comes out of ‘selfish interests’, that we could have a part in it – for a person who is desiring it, it is like seeking a reputation for selfish honor. And this again cannot be true godliness.
True marks of godliness are:
- Our true worship of God, our lives are truly devoted to him. It is true that we will develop true love and joy and will spend time with God. True godliness is when we are truly one with Him and desire nothing less, to serve Him and love Him.
1 Timothy 6:6 – 8, ‘But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. 7For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. 8If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content’.
Godliness accompanied by contentment is great gain. Contentment in our food, clothing and shelter. When it comes to the earthly things, we need to be content. But regarding the Spiritual things, there should be a healthy, happy desire, hunger and the thirst. Jesus says, ‘We need to hunger and thirst for righteousness’.
1 John 5:3, ‘For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome’.
His commandments are not burdensome. It is a promise. It is indeed true that the more we focus completely and look to Jesus, seek His Word, then His light starts to lighten up our hearts again to become into Christ-likeness.
Tim Challis, a famous blogger wrote about people struggling with the sin, he said that, ‘try not to engage into anything that is an intense activity, that gives you happiness and great entertainment’ – if you do this then you will find – ‘reading the Bible and having fellowship’, very un-attractive!
Unless we are focused totally on Jesus, this world has its own attractions. ‘Turn your face full on Jesus’ only then the attractions of this world will start dimming away. Unless we turn to Him fully, these attractions are still there! We can see the beauty and glory of Jesus when we give our full attention to Him – His presence and His love.
When we start climbing a mountain, it becomes steeper and harder and narrower – but once we reach the top, the view becomes wider, fresher and can see much different vegetation. In the same way, as we come closer and closer to God, other things start to lose their attractions and we can begin, to look at things from the way God looks at them. We can have a better and wider view as on a mountain top. To the one, who is not turned completely to God, His commandments seem burdensome but to the one, who turns completely to Him, His commandments are not burdensome.
We will still be doing the usual earthly things, but the attractions would fade away.
