The Center

It sure has been a while since I've posted anything. Hope I can get into the habit of sharing more with you. Today marks a turning point for my life. For a long time I've wrestled with a certain passage in the Bible: Philippians 1:21a "For to me, to live is Christ..." That means life is Christ. Are you confused? How can life be Christ? 

Over this past weekend I went with the Meridian Point youth group to the Desperation Conference held at New Life Church. Needless to say, it was an incredible conference! God really did some awesome things there. It was humbling to see such a large group of teenagers cry out to God out of desperation to know Him more and in worship!

During one of the seminars, I went in to listen to Glen Packiam. God has truly blessed him with an ability to understand His Word. What I'm really thankful for is that he doesn't keep what God's revealing to him a secret. Anyway, he talked about Dagon and God from 1 Samuel 5. Take a moment to read this story. One of the things countries used to do when they went to war and plunder the cities was to take their enemies gods away so they could worship them too. The were collector's items and the more of them you had the better. Glen explained that Dagon was a god that symbolized success, or fame and wealth. What the people in didn't understand was that their god wasn't a god at all in comparison with the Lord. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the Philistines realized that and started worshiping God because He beat up Dagon, proving that no other god compares to Him. Instead, they sent the ark back to Israel. 

Here's the deal. The very first commandment in the Ten Commandments states that you shall have no other gods before God. That doesn't mean we can have gods after Him. God can't be categorized like a baseball card, or rated on value. He doesn't want to be first in our lives, He wants to be the only One. Making Him first implies that there are other things after Him. 

Did you know that no where in Scripture is there a reference to having a spiritual life? Our lives becomes transformed and should change. We've divided our physical life from our spiritual life and we're all only one person. There is no separation. God wants to be the center of your life. God wants to be the Core of our very being, to affect everything we do...like a red shirt in a white load of laundry. He wants to bleed out into every area of our lives. He needs to infect us to affect what we do, say, think, look at, speak at, work, husband, wife, parent, live as a son or daughter, and everything. I'll admit that I've not been very good at this at all. And I imagine that most people haven't either. But now I understand that life is Christ. There is nothing else. There should be nothing else. I've also come to grips that if I have a second place I'm confining God to be only what I want Him to be instead of trusting Him because of who He is. 

Purpose with me to make Christ the center of our lives. Let's let Him be the one and only. Let's stop categorizing, containing, and rating God. He is all there is.