The Secret by Festo, submitted by the McJunkin's

THE SECRET

By Festo Kivengere
What is the secret of keeping zeroed in on Christ in the midst of everyday pressures? That’s a million-dollar question and a beautiful one. I wish I had a very simple way of telling you. The only way I know for a distracted mind to keep zeroing in on Christ is by the work of the blessed Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

How does he do it? Some of us think that it is by giving us more and more gifts. No, no, no. There is only one magnet which God uses, and the magnet is the Lord Jesus Christ. He can keep your attention when you are tending to wander. He can hold you when you cannot hold yourself. His love is stronger than death, and when it holds a poor man with a wandering mind and with tendencies to fall, that man, that woman, can stand through eternity.

That is the secret. The practical aspect is that I am not always full of love, not always seeing Him. I am many times thoroughly empty. But He loves to fill empties! All you need to do is keep open, that’s all. You keep open by admitting frankly how empty you are. This is where respectable Christianity fails. God does not deal with respectability. He deals with reality. Here I am with an empty heart, or with thoughts that have invaded the inner man and have interrupted the flow of the Holy Spirit. The Comforter is grieved; what do I do?

Go to the hospital. The hospital has one medicine: the love of Jesus Christ. His love breaks me, convicts me and releases me all at once. We Anglicans have a prayer in our liturgy in which we confess that we are “miserable offenders.” We forget that in the New Testament sense, you can weep and laugh at the same time. In other words, Christian repentance does not include a long period of remorse, being put into a sort of quarantine, before you come into grace. You turn from the sin which made you miserable and to the Lord all at once. Joy comes instantly. The two go together in one act. When you are explaining it theologically, it may give the impression that repentance starts a slow process called redemption while, in the meantime, you are left grieving. Not at all! Repenting without looking to Jesus is what Judas did. It turned him into a vacuum, into committing spiritual suicide.

Repenting which turns and sees Jesus is what Thomas did on that second Lord’s day (John 20:26-29). After bitter depression and a week of unbelief, he saw the outpoured love of the Son of God in the wounded hands reaching out to him. Repentance, forgiveness, faith and flooding joy came all in one breath: “My Lord and my God!” When I find I have not kept zeroed in, I turn from my sin or emptiness to the crucified Lord. Forgiveness and fullness come together.