Christian Living
Look upwards. It is a continual theme throughout scripture that God implores us to be consistently looking up. When Noah built the ark, God had him build it in such a way where he could only look up, hence looking only to God, “You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall finish it to a cubit from above” (Genesis 6:16, NKJ, read Genesis chapters 6-8). During battle, the Israelites would only overcome and defeat their enemy when Moses would hold up his hand towards God “and so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, God's enemy Amalek prevailed,” (Exodus 17:11, NKJ). “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up” (Psalm 5:3, NKJ). “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You (again, looking up to God),” Isaiah 26:3, NKJ). This theme goes all throughout scripture.
This “looking up” or looking to God is a discipline that is to be of utmost importance to us in our lives with God. It is a stern discipline. The world in which we live in does not lend itself in assisting us to “look up” and take note of God at all, much less count on Him. The world says “look within,” “look to others,” “look to government,” “look to national defense,” “look to Oprah” or “look to money.” Thus man and the world are both spiraling out of control. The family unit, morality and man’s character are all in total and constant chaos, along with most relationships, because we refuse to “look up,” to God.
Sad to say, but because we refuse to “look up” to God for all our life, many of us Christians’ are becoming more and more in the likeness of the world, than in the likeness of Jesus Christ. We have to begin to train ourselves to do what the great people of the Bible did, to continually look to God for our very life and everything it entails. Oh how it pleases God when His children live out a lifestyle of continually looking unto Him for our very lives, direction, sustenance and meaning.
But there is nothing like a crisis in a person’s life to get their eyes off themselves or their own circumstances and to put them on their original, rightful place, on God alone. Once we begin to take our eyes off of ourselves and begin to look only to God, we begin to take on our original design that God made us for, and consequently, we begin to live out the life He created us for. But again, this is a most crucial discipline which we as individuals must make into a habit. God will not do this for us, we have to form this habit for ourselves. May we begin to train ourselves to habitually “look unto Him” with the heart of a child as it looks to it’s mother or father, for everything. If we do, then to our amazement we will begin to rise in the Lord above all our circumstances, calm, strong and full of confidence in our God. But it does takes practice and God is infinitely patient when He knows we are trying to please Him.
It is when we do not look up to God that we begin to get exasperated, panicked, stressed out, worried and we wonder why it’s as if we are only half alive. It’s because we are no longer looking unto the Source and Creator of life, but rather to the creation itself. This is again, a discipline that is stern and very difficult to develop, but through our Lord we can form it and once it is developed, we become the freest and most joyful people on the face of the earth “the mind stayed and concentrated on God is held in perfect peace, by God Himself” (Isaiah 26:3). Then people will take note of the power of Jesus Christ in us. This is a habit that must be formed.
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