3 Things for the New Year Part 2

Well we have made it through the first week of 2021, and we are looking at 3 things that God is saying in John 20:21 to us in this season. Peace is the first word for this year. Peace is not the absence of trouble, but our emotional condition in the midst of trouble. Right now we as the church must walk in peace in spite of the turmoil in the world. Like the lighthouse in the midst of the sea, our peace causes us to stand out. The second thing we are looking at is focus. I think that in this day and age it has become very clear that our thought patterns and opinions are shaped by what we are focused on. If your world view revolves around your Facebook or Twitter feed you could have some confused ideas. There are so many distractions that draw away our focus from what is truly important, let's just run a test: How many hours do you spend looking at your phone each day? Now how many hours are you actively playing/talking to your family? We have these things attached to us all the time and it is a pandora's box of distraction.

So what are we supposed to focus on? That is what part 2 is all about, let's look at our text again.

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” John 20:21

The statement "As the Father has sent me" is the key for our focus in this hour. We must focus on the ME of that statement, Jesus. God had a plan to send Jesus to save all of mankind. It is seen all throughout the Bible, God started talking about it when Adam first sinned. It was shown to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was shown in great detail to David, Isaiah, and many other prophets. It was revealed to a young virgin named Mary. John 3:16 states this plan clearly:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. "

I believe that Jesus was sent for one reason, love. The love of God is both simple and complex, it is the essence of who He is. God loved us so much that he could not stand to leave us in a separated state from him, he was willing to give up his only son to get us back. Jesus agreed to live a sinless life and then die willingly to bring us back to God, even though there would be those that would reject what he did for them. That is love.

We must focus on Jesus, the work of the cross, and abide in the love of God.

How do we focus on Jesus? How do we abide in the love of God? I believe it all starts in the Bible. It is the word of God that purifies our perspective. It lays out the plan of God for humanity and for us personally. It has become a daily thing for me that I receive the perspective of God from his Word. When we read the Bible the Holy Spirit can fill us with the love of God. We need to take the word of God and move it from a resolution that gets lost in a few weeks, and make it our primary focus. Where we go to the word instead of the news. Instead of making decisions based on how we feel or what we want, we go to the wisdom found in scripture.

The Bible is like a scope, there are 3 things that I can think of that are similar between the two.

A scope allows us to magnify our target so that we can see it clearly and accomplish our purpose. Whether you are hunting or if you are just shooting at a target, when you magnify the object it makes it much easier to hit the target. The word of God is what magnifies who Jesus is and what He has done for us. I like that analogy because Jesus is the only one that needs to be magnified in our vision. We go where our focus is set on, it is the target we are aiming at.

What I also love about a scope is that it isolates your vision from the things that surround you. All you see is the target and not everything that may be going on. The Bible is like that it is the building block of faith. When we walk in faith we will focus in on what the word of God says instead of the circumstances around us.

The last thing about a scope is that it may take some time to get used to, it can be a challenge to look through. I know that the more I have looked through a scope the more familiar I have become with how to position my head and how to focus through it at my target. The word of God is similar, there are a lot of books of the Bible that can be complicated and leave the reader wondering what they are talking about. But as you read it and get more familiar with it, it gets clearer and clearer. The biggest thing that helped me was asking the Holy Spirit to show me what he is saying in the passage that I am about to read. He was the one who wrote it and he will speak to you directly in it.

We can go into this year with great hope because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and his word keeps us focused on our king, Jesus!