Thursday, March 13, 2008

Blood on Every Page, part 2

In the last post, I shared one of the ways God is teaching me to preach the gospel to myself every day. I write on the top of each page of Scripture I read how I see Christ revealed on that page. For those who care, here are some of the practical ways I am seeing fruit from this practice:
  • This practice creates an excitement to get up and read God's Word. I am anticipating seeing the glory of Christ each morning. I can't wait to turn the page and see...
  • This practice reminds me of my need. Most often, the aspect of Christ that I see is His willingness to bear my sin. Whenever a particular sin is present on that page of Scripture, Christ is there as the sin-bearer.
  • This practice forces me to understand what I'm reading. It is easy just to continue reading in order to get done instead of reading to comprehend and apply. Looking for Christ makes me stop on ponder the actual meaning of the text.
  • This practice forces me to think. It is not easy to see Christ on many of the pages of the Old Testament. He is there. I must simply think and pray.
  • This practice is training me to make Christ my singular focus.
  • This practice is filling my mind and heart with material for evangelism. Everyone I meet today has the same greatest need: Christ. If God gives me an opportunity today, I am ready to tell someone how God clothes us with Christ's righteousness if we place our faith in Him.
  • This practice is expanding my "redemptive vocabulary." The more I see Christ revealed in different ways, the more ways I have to speak of His person and work.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very good thoughts Justin! I am reading through the Bible right now and have sorta been doing this naturally.

I've also noticed how this helps to apply Christ more in my daily circumstances. For example, I went to my healthclub to workout last night. As any male will know it is a challenge to keep my eyes from lusting with so many attractive females around. Driving home I thought in amazement: Jesus never commited the sin of lust! How?! I can't imagine. The temptation is everywhere around us; on TV, the computer; at the healthclub etc.

Then it occured to me that Jesus must have always, with no exceptions, looked at every person he ever encountered, first and foremost as a child of God, created in the image of God! This set the context of how he saw and interacted with everyone. What an amazing Savior we have!

God give us the eyes of Christ to see people as He would! Have a great weekend!