Saturday, October 4, 2008

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

I remember a song that we used to sing in church when I was a young girl. I attended a Baptist church. The song said," Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.

I remember there were all kinds of people in my church from the very wealthy to the not so wealthy. In the church that I last left the scope of people was the same. One church was denominational and one church was Word of Faith. Even though the scope of income in these two churches was the same, the amount of materialism in them was very different.

In the Baptist church no one's faith was ever judged by others. No one was looked down upon if they did not have enough money. People of the church and the leadership were always anxious to help anyone in need. No one's "faith" was judged by how much they had, what things happened to them, how their children acted and things like that. As a matter of fact, their "faith" was not JUDGED. Neither were the people. We were all a part of the family of God and that is all that mattered. We were taught to seek and follow Jesus not jobs, money, houses, clothes or any other material things. We were taught about treating others right.

In the Word of Faith church there was so much materialism, criticism, legalism, judgementalism,
and self. There were things that I learned in the Word of Faith church that have made a great difference in my life such as who I am in Christ, my authority over the devil, and the fact that EVERY thing that happens in not always God's will. However all these things are useless if it is all centered around me, what I can have, what I can get, what I can control and that I can do anything I want and treat others any way that I want. All of this is not the Gospel. There was no focus on helping and reaching out to people and when there was, for a little while, from time to time, it was all about raising the numbers and then after a bit it just faded away.

I know that no one has all the answers. I certainly don't. I do know that God sent Jesus to die for PEOPLE. I know that everyone who is born again has been given the measure of faith. I know that we are all JOINT heirs with Jesus. I know that through the BLOOD we are all righteous. I know that we all overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. I know that there is not an elitist group in the body of Christ. I know that we can take God at His Word because He watches over His Word to perform it. I know that the fruit that we were saved to produce was souls brought into the kingdom of God and not material things.

I have decided to turn my eyes upon Jesus and get to know Him and not spend my time and effort on getting things for me. I would rather have the brightness of Him in my life than the dimness of what I can acquire of the material things that the world has to offer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey searching,
I would like to hear some more of your insight on why you think they didn't sing Hillsongs worship music or other songs of adoration at your former church. I thought what you had to say about it in a former post was real good.

Lita Wright said...

I guess what I stated in my former post are the basic reasons why I believe that my former church steered away from singing Hillsongs.I believe that the pastor there liked songs about what he could have, what he could do, and what authority he had. Hillsongs are totally focused on Jesus, who He is, His glory, the Father's glory, worship and adoration. They also point all importance away from the individual and toward God. I remember one time the former pastor stated that he wasn't really interested in the gospel until he heard the prosperity and power gospel and that is what pulled him in. The former pastor was more interested in people seeing the feathers in his cap than focusing on God.