October 13, 2017

Keep Yourself in God’s Love

“Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”  Jude 21

Love and mercy are powerful forces for good in our lives and the lives of others.  This instruction given to followers of Jesus is simply profound:  keep yourselves in God’s love while waiting for His mercy.  The question becomes, how do we keep ourselves in His love?

Part of the answer can be found in a pattern we find repeating itself in Scripture.  For our purposes, we will summarize it this way:

1)      Focus

2)      Find

3)      Fix

First, we are to be intentional and purposeful in choosing to focus on our Lord.  We make time for Him and we deliberately focus on Him, rather than on our worries and woes.  This is easy to write and can be a challenge to live out.  We are called to this lifestyle of focusing on God, much like David did. 

Second, as we focus on Jesus, we will find Him.  It is a remarkable, exciting, and fascinating process of discovery – as we so often “find” Him where we least expect.  I may focus on Him in the morning and find Him in the afternoon in the post office.  It is a great and marvelous prayer to pray: let me find You today, Lord.  So often David found the Lord in unusual places – but he found Him.  That is the key.

Third, we fix ourselves upon the One whom we have found.    We are committed to stay, remain, or fix our gaze, our heart, and our thoughts upon our Lord.  In the fixing we develop a lifestyle of continually discovering and re-discovering Jesus.  Jesus leads us to the Father and the Father is love.  When we find Jesus, we find love.