The Abiding Consciousness Of God

Not aloneWhat do you think about during the day? More importantly, when you become stressed, what are your initial thoughts and reactions? Whatever our minds are conditioned to think about will always be our initial thoughts. Whether or not we dwell upon them is a matter of Christian discipline and maturity.

So it would seem that if we conditioned our minds to dwell upon God, then our initial thoughts would logically turn to our Lord Jesus Christ.

    “Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. He himself shall dwell in prosperity, and his descendants shall inherit the earth. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net.” (Psalm 25:12-15)

Imagine being taught about life by the Lord Himself. Many Christians would have to imagine it because that is the only way they could relate to it, for they have no real personal experience with it. Through His Word, God teaches us how we are to live this life on earth. There is so much simple and sound doctrine within the pages of your Bible that you would never really need any other “how-to” book. How do I know this? Centuries of human existence has proved it so.

The reason we do not rely on God and His thoughts is because we do not trust Him enough. Our hope relies in our own eyes and ways to get us through this workaday world. The problem with this is that you can never enter in to a real relationship with God, into the inner circle of Christ:

    “Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the plots of man; You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” (Psalm 31:19-20)

The sad part of trying to rely on our own thoughts and wisdom is that the Bible guarantees it will end in failure:

    “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.” (Psalm 33:10-12)

I understand how easy it is to get consumed by what we face in our lives. Our flesh convinces us that we are right to do so, and even comes up with logical explanations for doing so. That is our flesh hanging on for dear life. if we are going to become consumed by anything, let it be God. Commenting on our passage from Psalm 25, Oswald Chambers explains:

    “What are you haunted by? You will say—By nothing, but we are all haunted by something, generally by ourselves, or, if we are Christians, by our experience. The Psalmist says we are to be haunted by God. The abiding consciousness of the life is to be God, not thinking about Him. The whole of our life inside and out is to be absolutely haunted by the presence of God. A child’s consciousness is so mother-haunted that although the child is not consciously thinking of its mother, yet when calamity arises, the relationship that abides is that of the mother. So we are to live and move and have our being in God, to look at everything in relation to God, because the abiding consciousness of God pushes itself to the front all the time.”

My greatest challenge in life is to stop hoping in me and always hope in Christ. The only way I am going to arrive to that point is to allow the preeminence of Christ reign in me.

Let it be so Lord!

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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    Copyright © 2013 David Jeffers

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