Jesus University St James

Focus

Focus

One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4a).

 When Adam walked with God in the Garden of Eden he walked with God a perfect man with the focus of his attention constantly absorbed in God. Adam was totally absorbed in God, one with Him. He entirely existed to please his God and Father. He was created a perfect living soul, alive to God. His emotions, mind and memory were filled with God. Just by being Adam he blissfully loved his God and Father spontaneously with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind and with all his strength. The members of his body were in unison with his perfect soul reflecting the righteousness and compassion of the Lord manifested in divine wisdom. Adam was created the son of God (Luke 3:38). All of his attention was focused on his Father’s business. His entire being, his spirit, soul and body, were dedicated to bring joy and fulfillment to God and he delighted himself in his Creator.

 When sin entered Adam, conflict entered his soul, then his focus shifted to seek joy and fulfillment in the confusion of his own heart, separately from God. When he betrayed God’s love he died to God in his spirit soul and body as a branch being severed from the Vine. Because he fell from the glory of God, he was unable to manifest the Word of God, as he was no longer in Christ. Since the transgression he was divided in himself. His spirit and soul was at war for dominion over his body. The goodness of God that he manifested made room for evil he did not wish to practice. Joy left his soul as he fell from the supernatural realm of paradise to the natural realm of a broken universe.

 As man is locked into the natural realm of the flesh he lost the ability to sense God with his body and soul. Since that lamentable day man could not observe God with his natural senses. Fallen man started to call on the name of the Lord that he might find life, peace and joy in God as he lives in a chaotic universe that he created through his rebellion against God.

 Focus is a function of attention and awareness in distinct vision. Without a vision you will perish. Unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God. To have spiritual vision you need to be born from above. A spiritual focus is developed when you constantly seek godly wisdom and understanding with all of your heart. To have a spiritual focus is to be spiritually tuned into godly matters.

 A spiritual focus is when Jesus absorbs all of your attention so that He may impart into your spirit an ever-expanding revelation of Himself, so much so, that all other things come into sharp contrast with His beauty.

 God is Spirit and those who seek to worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Deep calls unto deep. Spirit calls unto Spirit. On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38). Drink of this water and it will become a well of living waters in you.

 Are you tired of the soulish realm? Do you want to become a spiritual person? It is only when you walk in the Spirit that you can truly focus on the Lord. It is only by walking in the Spirit that the distractions are gone and you behold the Lord clearly. You can only please God through faith that is worked through love for Him. In the absence of love for the Lord you revert back to laws and regulations. The spontaneous flow of the fountain within has dried up as when fountains dried up because of long dry seasons. The spontaneous flow of faith in God, hope and love is not there and we start injuring each other. We start walking in the flesh by doing religious works that has displaced our thirst after the Lord, which falsely appease our minds. This is the worst kind of deception to fall in because it is the beginning of spiritual death. It has killed our first love for the Lord and our labors in the Lord have become burdensome. We have moved our focus away from the Lord to religious activity.

 Our revelation of His mercy, grace and love has become a doctrine because the oil of the Holy Spirit is absent. You have transformed His mercy and grace into laws again and by doing so frustrated the grace of God. The law can never bring perfection because it is weak through the flesh. The law is burdensome and leaves you with condemnation and devastation. Because the law is perfect it is burdensome and heavy and no flesh could ever fulfill it. It took Emanuel to fulfill the law on our behalf. Christ has come to set you free and whom the Son of God has set free, is free indeed. For freedom sake you must set your focus and mind on Christ until all other things disappear into the vapor of insignificance.

 When you see the error of your own heart, you will start crying out to the Lord to dwell in the secret place of the Most High where you will be protected under the shadow of the Almighty. Then He will deliver you from the snares of the law and religious thinking that separates you from Christ. He will deliver you from the deception of your own heart. He will cover you in truth and He will become a shield of faith to you. He will deliver you from the darkness of foreign thinking, the unbelief of your own heart. When you sense His presence He will circumcise your heart that you may worship Him in Spirit and in truth. You will speak words of faith unto Him and utter sounds in the Spirit to declare His praises. He will be your victory over the flesh and make you a pillar in the house of His God. The anointing breaks the joke of the bondage of the flesh and the curse of the law. In His presence is fullness of joy and peace. The Holy Spirit works the fruit of righteousness.

 When He lived and when He died; when He was resurrected His focus was on you and me. For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross. The righteous Servant of God justified many because He suffered their iniquities and made intercession for the transgressors. He shall see His seed, a harvest of sons.

 All things that do not pertain to life and godliness are folly and belong to this passing age. Occupy your minds with the things in how we will please the Lord and how we will serve one another to the edification and benefit of one another. If you do these things you do well. He that does not love does not know God, because God is love.

 I have asked the Lord why the Pharisees knowing the law, which testifies of Him, never, came to Him? They were like the ancient people who build themselves the tower of Babel, and who made a name for them. The Pharisees perverted the law by building a doctrine, which were the teachings of men to gain a name of self-righteousness. Their focus was never on God like Abraham, Moses and David. They called themselves the offspring of Abraham but Jesus said that if they were the children of Abraham, they would have done the works of Abraham, but they seek to kill Him.

 The religious spirit is perpetuated through the ages and manifests itself in self-righteousness and judging others according to the laws of our religious hearts. A religious person lacks the thirst after God. To seek Him is not in his heart; therefore they are often critical (killing) toward those that seek Him with all of their hearts. They become so taken up with side issues that they almost develop an inability to brake into the spirit realm. You can only break into the spirit realm if you seek God with all of your heart for God is spirit. You can say, “Rabbi where do you dwell.” The Lord will say, “Come and see.” We do not know Him after flesh but after the spirit. If you are looking for a physical Jesus you will not find Him. He has risen and He is seated on the right hand of the Father. He is not Jesus of Nazareth anymore; He is the Lord of heaven. It is He that commanded light to shine out of darkness. It is He that shines in your heart the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face (presence) of Jesus Christ.

 How the religious hold one another in bondage by sitting in the chair of Moses. During 2008, a prominent man of God, like Demas, left the road of truth because he loved the ways of this world more then the ways of Christ. Like Esau he exchanged his birthright for the pleasures of this world. The next moment those who appointed themselves as “the defenders of God’s truth” crucified this man on various WebPages on the Internet. It is a grievous matter and we should weep this tragedy and not rejoice with harsh comments. O, brothers did you so easily forget the mercy, grace and love of God by which you were saved. Instead of judging the man you should rather pray, to our Lord and Savior, for the restoration of his soul and ministry. I will never sanction what he has done to Body of Christ but neither will I participate in hypocritical and fruitless discussions. Forsake this carnal behavior and leave disciplinary procedures to those in authority to decide what measures must be taken to protect the church. Yes, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

 We have not yet come to know what mercy and graze means. It is made perfect in love. All godliness is rooted in love. How we have become distracted and alienated in our minds from the simplicity that is in Christ. We have not yet learned that love covers a multitude of sins. We disassociate from others that do not maintain the same doctrinal viewpoint that we have, yet that person is our brother or sister. How carnal we have become in our thinking because of divisions. All these unimportant things absorb our attention away from Christ and these are manifestations of hearts in deception.

 All these things happened to us because nobody ever taught us how to focus on the Lord. No wonder we are so distracted from our course to grow up into all aspects of the image of the Son of God who is Lord of all things.

 When the Lord was tempted Jesus, He was tested on His sonship. In Matthew 4 Satan said two times to Jesus, “If you were the Son God.” Jesus is the Word made flesh and in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The war is over the Word. As the Word of God was tested so are we tested on the Word within us – “Has God said.” We are the light of the world. We are a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden.

 Can we focus so much on the Lord that all of His glory can be manifested in us? I am convinced we can. A ballad based on the breastplate of St. Patrick, adapted by James Quinn is as follows:

 Christ beside me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, King of my heart;

Christ within me, Christ below me,

Christ above me never to part.

 

Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left hand,

Christ around me shield in my strife;

Christ in my sleeping, Christ in my sitting,

Christ in my rising, light of my life.

 

Christ be in all hearts thinking about me,

Christ be on all tongues telling of me.

Christ be the vision in eyes that see me,

In ears that hear me Christ ever be.

 

The revelation you need now is to keep your spirit open to God. If you focus pure love on the Lord, everything else will become dim and disappear into oblivion; and the devil cannot use anything against you. There is no law against love. Godliness is profitable for all things. If you focus on the Lord, the devil will find nothing in you that he can use as leverage that will affect you. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation (Hebrews 9:28b). Every man that has this hope in him purifies himself.

 I believe that the Lord wants us to come to the place where we love Christ so deeply, with a love beyond any human love, that our focus of everything else blank out. Our reasonable sacrifice to Him is to present our bodies a living sacrifice. A sacrifice is that which is dead. We reckon through faith ourselves dead to this world but alive to Christ. So, that which is dead cannot respond to anything. If we are only alive in Christ we can only respond to Him.

 In boxing you do not watch your opponent’s feet or body, but his eyes, so that you can anticipate the punch. The eyes are the place where a punch may be signaled. So all other areas are out of focus yet these athletes’ fighting is purely through instinct. This type of fitness does not happened automatically but it takes years of training to become a prized fighter. The same is true with the martial arts. Likewise focusing on Lord takes practicing. It is a conditioning of your spiritual system. The difference is that you have the Holy Spirit that is your trainer, which will lead you into all truth. He is the One that will aid you in your weaknesses. So, for us it is all the time, by the grace of God, a winning situation. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

 We need not to take years to grow in the Lord. In the spirit realm, through faith, things can happen much faster. It still necessitates a discipline of your spirit. When I went to university you could see which students first went to the army to complete their military training and those who came directly from high school. Those who completed their military training before coming to university were much more disciplined and mature in all areas of their lives.

 I have learned much about discipline during my athletic career and I apply much of those principals today in my spiritual living. I am convinced that you also have life experiences, which you can draw on for making things work for you in your walk with God.

 The first decision that you must make is to decide if this walk with the Lord is for you. If you have decided to go all the way walking with the Lord you must start conditioning your spirit into “spiritual fitness.” It means you must practice focusing on the Lord. You cannot falter between two opinions. If you want to know the Lord then press on to know the Lord. If you want to do something different then do it with all of your heart otherwise you will have a miserable life. You cannot serve God and have other gods in your saddlebag.

 Focusing on the Lord has everything to do with your love relationship with the Lord. Focusing on the Lord is the basis for all other practical applications to love the Lord. If you love the Lord keep his commandments. A new commandment He has given us and that is to love one another. If you love the Lord you will only have eyes for Him. All other relationships are under His inspection and under His direction.

 When starting to practice to focus on the Lord, waiting on the Lord, meditating on the word of the Lord, prayer and intercession, etc. many bubbles of illusions will burst. It is like training athletics having unrealistic expectations. Many things will not work out according to your expectation. Alter your expectation and practicing to focus on the Lord. The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. Trust the anointing of the Holy Spirit in you. To trust the anointing is like starting a new relationship. Trust must be build through faith. Trust me, the Holy Spirit will never let you down. The moment you think He is not there He is trying to show you something different.

 Do not give up. Our walk with the Lord is through faith and not by feeling. There will be times of refreshment in the presence of the Lord but most times you will have to walk by faith. The proof of our dedication is to persevere through faith. Without faith you cannot please God.

 To make it easy on yourself use you imagination. Pray always. It does not mean that you must be on your knees all the time. It means to be in communication with God all the time. Pray all the time in the Spirit. Always ask the Holy Spirit to anoint your imagination or your focus, in fact your whole being. In this way your spirit will always be open to God.

 Imagine Christ within you the hope of glory. You start being the servant of all. You bring every imagination into the obedience to Christ. It only works through faith and love. To live a life without love is to live a life without the anointing. The anointing breaks the joke of resistance.

 Love is the most important key to all things because love is the only perfection that we have. Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

Luke 6:36 expressed the same thing just in a practical way: “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

 Mercy and grace is the expression of love. Mercy is the removal of recompense and guilt for offences committed against you. This is true forgiveness. Grace refers to the stretching out of a hand of favor to your brother or sister that they do not deserve. This is to be a servant of the Lord. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. You cannot service God without focusing on Him. 

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