Keeping Focus in Christianity

Christianity has a core and a periphery. All truth is important, but not all truth is essential.

It is often forgotten in many churches what is of absolute importance and what while important is not essential. Our concern for the purity of the church should be more focused on what is of absolute importance than what is at the edge.

Often what is at the edge of Christianity dominates the discussion. Concerns about style in music or method of distributing the Lord's super or exact details of how this or that should look in the church dominate. All of these things are good and well, but they are always at the side.

The church's focus should always be at the heart of Christianity--the good news of the offer of grace to sinners because of Christ's perfect life, death, and resurrection. If we get the center of Christianity right everything else will fall into place.

It is our union with the risen Jesus which makes people better. Too often we see people trying to improve the behavior of their church by preaching law day in and day out.

Often the problem of behavior in church is not a failure to understand law, but to really grasp grace. It is grace which shows us the greatness of the love of God for us. Often we cannot truly grasp how far we are from righteousness until we see what perfect love is and perfect love does.

Often it is more grace that transforms us than law. We try to faithfully live out law because of and only because of grace.

Planning to Rest: What Is Absolutely Necessary?

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Contributor

The Bible clearly calls us to rest—to not constantly work but to take times of rest, especially on the Sabbath, and that plan to rest needs to be intentional for most people. It takes work (preparation and planning) to rest from work, but it's worth it.

The first step is to find out what is absolutely necessary, such as washing dishes and other similar tasks. And possibly only doing what is necessary for that day or week.

Putting common things you do on a list may be helpful. Anything on it that's not necessary and in all honesty not restful in some sense, should be taken off the to-do list. Also, not waiting until the last minute to do these tasks is important too. Rushing or feeling stressed may actually cause it to take longer or for you to feel more tired after the task.

If there are things that need to be caught up on, taking a small amount of time each day on a project is better than working non-stop for many hours and days.

We may think certain things are essential to do that aren't, and often the reason may be pressure from other people or commercials and our perception of what other people think we should be doing, like joining the most recent book club or Bible study or a number of activities. These activities can be good, but it should be a thought-out decision of whether or not they crowd a schedule too much or an activity that you truly enjoy.

It's very easy these days to find a large amount of opportunities of things to do. If we do as many as we can without being intentional about rest, it's hard to enjoy and be fully present at them all, let alone feel healthy and rested in everyday life. God wants us to thrive, and he cares about our rest.