Focus
We have to decide what we will focus our eyes and mind on. We decide what our desires will be and we feed those desires by what we set our minds on. “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Colossians 3:1-2). By commanding us to set our mind, it is understood that we choose what enters and stays in our mind.
Are your eyes on Jesus or events?
What we set our eyes on becomes what we will worship. God alone is worthy of our worship and serve (see Luke 4:8). We live in a world where events happen, but even the greatest events are not worthy of our worship. Even the event of accepting Jesus as our savior should not be worshipped. It was a great thing that happened and we changed because of it but we should not worship the past.If each of God's works creates a tree, the forest of God would be immeasurably large. Don't let the observation of any of the trees draw your worship away from the Creator of the forest. Every tree in God's forest of works can teach us about who God is. We can spend an eternity examining any one of the trees, but we shouldn't allow the focus of the tree or even the focus of the forest draw us away from the worship of God, the Creator of all good things.
God is always doing things in your life.
We are connected to what we do. We are continually shaped by what we continually do, so that what we used to have to purposefully think about do we begin to do naturally. God is love because God loves. God is relational because he pursues a relationship with His creation, and He lives in a relationship with Himself. Jesus ascended, resurrected, died, and incarnated because God is redemptive and God does what He is. The Holy Spirit continues to work in our life as He teaches us about God. (Revelation 4 says that God is worthy to receive praise because of what He has done and is doing).
Is prayer an event that you do over and over or is it something deeper?
Prayer is communicating with God, which is a two way road. God is always communicating with us, so prayer doesn’t have to be something we stop doing everything else to pursue. Prayer can be something we carry with us as we go about doing the things of life. Through prayer, we present our human words before the infinite God. But God is so great that even forming the words for our prayer is beyond our ability. “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:25-26). We become the vehicle of God’s conversation as God cries on to God on our behalf. Prayer is much more than something we do as a spiritual act. Kieth Green put it this way:
Make my life a prayer to You
I wanna do what You want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers, no compromise
I wanna shine the light You gave
Through Your Son You sent to save us
From ourselves and our despair
It comforts me to know You're really there
We must pursue God in the depth of His holiness. Our focus cannot be on anything other than the depth of the magnitude of His greatness. Who can fathom the depth of our God and who can measure His greatness?