{"id":937,"date":"2010-03-17T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T06:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=937"},"modified":"2010-02-20T11:55:34","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T10:55:34","slug":"lenten-devotions-2010-wednesday-17-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2010\/03\/17\/lenten-devotions-2010-wednesday-17-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenten Devotions 2010: Wednesday 17 March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>\u201c\u2026 let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>Hebrews 12:2<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0WHERE IS YOUR FOCUS?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0In the world today there are many distractions drawing our attention and focus away from Christ \u2013 schoolwork,\u00a0 job demands, material goods,\u00a0 family issues \u2013 causing worry, sinful desires, unhealthy choices and sadness in our lives. We are so easily distracted. But the Lord commands us to fix our eyes on <em>Him<\/em>, creator of our faith, to establish and be steadfast in our beliefs, so that our actions will be based on that trust, not on worldly expectations.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cCome to Calvary\u2019s holy mountain, Sinners, ruined by the fall\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 What a sombre sight on which to focus:\u00a0 Christ, sinless and perfect, suffering on the cross for <em>me.<\/em>\u00a0 Yet be firm in the belief that we, as weak and wounded sinners, needed Christ to go to the cross for our salvation and He went willingly, out of love for each of us.\u00a0\u00a0 The hymnist continues, \u201c\u2026.here a pure and healing fountain flows, for you, for me, for all\u2026.\u201d, wiping out the pain and destruction caused by our misguided focus on earthly things.\u00a0 Fix your eyes upon Jesus, for beyond the cross, beyond the darkness of our sin and desperate attempts to save ourselves, we will see Christ exalted \u2013 Christ sitting at the right hand of the throne of God &#8211; Christ, who endured the suffering and shame for your sake and mine,\u00a0 now seated in all His glory, having secured also for us an exalted place of honour, forever with our triumphant Lord!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lord, thank You for the gift of my faith.\u00a0 Help me daily to keep my focus on Your Word and to live my life according to Your holy will.\u00a0 Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c\u2026 let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.\u201d\u00a0 Hebrews 12:2 \u00a0WHERE IS YOUR FOCUS? \u00a0In the world today there are many distractions drawing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":938,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}