How to focus your heart on Christ | Clip from Sanctification

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So, when we say the cure is to focus on Christ, I think that just about everybody that attends church would say, well, that's exactly what we do at my church.

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We focus on Christ. Or, I focus on Christ. I mean, I don't focus on somebody else as my Savior. But some very practical ways, one would be to really search out in the

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Scriptures those passages that give you the highest, clearest views of the person and the work of Christ.

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Colossians 1, you know, following that prayer, Paul gives, depending on how you divide it, these seven or so descriptions of Christ that if a person would walk through those slowly, using other passages in the

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Bible to help fill that in, using commentaries to help fill in detail, if you were to memorize that, what a gripping thing.

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I mean, can you think of other passages that you found particularly helpful on the person of Christ? Hebrews 1.

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The descriptions in Isaiah are helpful passages to my soul. Yeah, we've talked about those so many times.

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Those are always my favorites. Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 53 are songs about Christ.

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Yeah, I mean, the scenes in Revelation, Revelation 5. You know, so really just a long soak in passages that deal primarily or directly, not indirectly, with the person of Christ until that begins to alter you within.

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Another thing you can do is really be careful in the books you pick. And he talks about that in the chapter. Don't just read good books.

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You don't have enough time. Read the very best books. And the very best books will probably be the books that give you the clearest pictures of Christ.

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Owen's book, The Glory of Christ, is good. But really one of my favorites is, not by a

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Puritan, but by a 19th century man named William Blakey, a Scottish man in the late 19th century, who wrote a book called

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The Glimpses into the Inner Life of Our Lord, something like that. A little hard to find. Do you have a favorite?

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Thomas Vincent's The True Christian's Love to the Unseen Christ. John Flavel, is this his first volume or second volume that deals with the mediatorial glories of Christ?

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Yeah, The Fountain of Life or something, yeah. That's one of the sweetest. I spent almost a year reading a sermon a week just walking through that, and it was so good.

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Yeah, it really is. There are so many. Another practical help is how we approach the quiet time.

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I mean, you can approach it in a way to just read, or you can approach it to look at Him and to spend time with Him in whatever passage you're in.

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I'm reading right now through Clyde Cranford's book, Because We Love Him, with a young believer. And Clyde talks about having that goal of spending time with Him for the purpose of knowing

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Him and having our hearts preoccupied with Him. Yeah, I've been reading through 1 and 2

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Chronicles in the last couple of months in my quiet time. I did not expect this to be the outcome, but every time

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I look at David or Solomon or a failed king, of course David and Solomon both failed at times, but it's just sweet to back up from that portrait and realize the

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Son of David, not Solomon, the Son, is the perfect king. And how

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He, where every place where David or Solomon or, you know, Josiah or Hezekiah or Asa were strong,

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Christ is infinitely better. And every place they were weak, Christ is flawless. And just to see how a kingdom is blessed under a godly king and then step back and think, but John, you belong to an unshakable kingdom and the king is perfect.

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And, you know, how these things ought to move you to grab hold of Him and not let an inch be between you and your