As I go through a day looking to Jesus to live, I find myself miraculously doing right, doing well. The miraculous part is that I’m not striving or trying to do right—or even to avoid “not-right” behavior.
It’s happening automatically as I orient my mind, my thoughts, my heart to Jesus Christ. I find my disposition changed, not by anything I’m doing for Him, but because of what He is doing in me.
You may be puzzled after so many years of being told you have to be righteous in order to get Him to come and encircle you about in His arms of safety.
Please let me do my best to describe to you what it is like to be gifted with the ability to always remember Him and to think of Him continually—without effort on your part.
Have you ever been waiting to go on a much anticipated trip?
Do you remember what it is like the last few days of school before Christmas vacation?
Do you remember waiting for Christmas—especially when there’s an almost sure chance that you’re going to get that much-desired gift, that bike or play-station or puppy or pony or whatever the greatest gift you’ve ever imagined to that point in your life?
Or (and this is the best comparison of all) have you ever been in love—so totally smitten with the other person that no matter what else you might be doing, you are thinking of them at the same time? They are the last person you think of at night and you wake up excited just to be with them each new day?
That is what it is like to enter into the all consuming love of and from Christ. That is what it means to be consumed in love for Him. You have no goal but to seek Him, to always remember Him—and to let the rest of life unfold as you go about with His companionship, through the Holy Spirit. First and foremost, He is always your greatest desire.
I pray for all of us to have this greatest of all the gifts of God—this gift of the pure love for Christ and from Christ. This Christmas, I pray for this gift of open heart-to-heart communion with the Holy One.
~Colleen H.
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