How to focus your heart on Christ | Clip from Sanctification

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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