Once we become Christian, we immediately have a new battle to fight in this world. It’s the battle of priority. Not that we didn’t battle priorities before. We did. But depending on how old we were before we came to Christ, we may have battled with prioritizing school appropriately, or our health, or our friendships, or our family, or any number of things. But once we realized our need for Christ, repented, and believed, we suddenly had something far more important to prioritize than grades or anything else for that matter.
Our immediate priority became allowing Christ to be glorified through us in our daily lives.
It’s a big deal, right? I mean, now that Christ is in us, we are part of His body and so we strive to let Him work through every element of our lives. When we let Him, He works through us as we learn, parent, work, relate, hustle, seek, and rest. And, while Jesus doesn’t have a row of boxes we have to check in order to be deserving of the salvation He’s already given us, there are some clear signs that we are not seeking Christ–not putting Jesus at the center of our lives. We become distracted Christians.
On this side of heaven, we will never arrive at perfection. As long as we have skin, we will never fully be perfect. But when we seek after God, pursue a deep relationship with Him, we store up treasures in heaven.
I’ve been thinking about some ways we can pinpoint whether or not we’re making a deeper relationship with Christ a priority. I don’t think I could make an exhaustive list, but here are some of the most obvious ways we can check our hearts in this arena:
1. Regular gatherings with other Christians not prioritized
We absolutely must be involved in Christian community! Community sharpens us, helps us heal, teaches us, supports us, and gives us opportunities to be Christ to others. Healthy communities are brimming with people who will encourage, challenge, and support one another. If we aren’t prioritizing weekly gatherings–or even multiple weekly gatherings–we’re not prioritizing the Body of Christ. We should not be skipping out on Christian community.
2. People would be surprised to learn that you’re a Christian
I want you to seriously join me in this part of today’s self-evaluation. Let’s be honest with ourselves. Do the people around us, including our coworkers and people in our virtual and real-life groups, know that we’re Christians? I mean, we don’t always have to lead with that fact. (I have awkwardly led with this before; it may have had something to do with the fact that it was 2020 and I hadn’t talked to people in person in months due to the pandemic and having a baby.)
But, when others find out that we’re Christians, will it surprise them? Will they have serious questions about our faith-based on how we treat others and what we prioritize in life? If so, there’s a problem that we need to fix. That’s not to say that we must always be perfect in front of everyone; but overall, if we’ve been believing in Jesus for much time at all, it should not surprise others when they find out we believe in Jesus.
3. Prayer is sparse
Oh, man. This is one of those areas of The Faith that has the potential to remind us every single day that we are not enough without Jesus. Why? Because we can literally never ever ever ever pray enough. Ever.
In fact, Paul encourages us to never ever stop praying. There is a plethora of Bible studies, blog posts, podcast episodes, and books about prayer. It’s complex, simple, beautiful. It’s messy. And it’s easy for some and difficult for others. And mostly, we can never ever spend enough time in intentional prayer because we can always talk more to Jesus and listen more to the spirit.
We will never arrive at perfection in this area of following Jesus. But, overall, when we forget to pray, we’re forgetting to spend time with the One who we claim we believe gave his perfect life to save us from eternal punishment. Gosh. And I don’t know one person, including myself, who has attained perfection in this area, even for a season.
But if we aren’t praying ever or are rarely praying and spending time quietly with God, we’re distracted. Maybe even distracted by something good. Maybe family life is interrupting our time to pray or our pursuit of a college degree is absorbing so much of our thought energy that we don’t have any left to talk to God. When this happens, we have to be intentional about reorganizing our lives and refocus on Christ and spend time with Him. We can even couple it with reading the Bible.
4. Bible-reading isn’t a regular goal
What if I started this section with “Oh, man,” again? Because this one can totally take a back-burner to anything and everything in our lives.
I have met people who are great about reading the Bible every.single.day. I’m not one of them. At least not in the season when I’m writing this. I’ve had seasons of rocking the Bible-reading. I had seasons of college when I found refuge in The Word. And as a single woman, I was regularly digging into the word in Bible studies with my church ladies. But when I didn’t have Bible studies, I lost the habit after a bit.
Bible-reading is kin to prayer. They’re like peanut butter and jelly for people not allergic to peanuts. They’re the most dynamic duo. And, when we are reading the Bible, we get the amazing opportunity to see who Jesus is. We get to learn about His character.
And if we’re not aiming to make Bible-reading part of our regular, daily lives, something needs to change.
5. Nothing we consume is Christian
I was raised solely on Christian music. We watched a ton of Christian television and we kept our non-Christian consumption very clean. When I was a very young adult, I even chose to watch movies that are G or PG, not PG-13 or higher. (PS: That was a choice I made for that season of my life; it was good for me and I don’t regret it one bit.) I aim to flood my kids’ lives with as much Jesus content as possible.
However, let’s not take this to a legalistic end. We don’t have to ignore all mainstream consumables. We don’t have to cut out all of T-Swift if Jesus hasn’t convicted us to do so. We can totally rock some Adelle when we’re feeling it. Reading non-Christian fiction can be completely okay.
But. But-but-but.
The more we consume Gospel-centric books, music, and podcasts, the more Christ-minded we are. When the Gospel is in what we’re consuming, it becomes more of a part of us. We are distracted from Christ when we spend less time consuming Him.
So, switch over to Christian playlists on Spotify. Pick up a non-fiction book by a Christ-centric author to learn more about the Bible or prayer or Christ. Watch The Chosen or other good, clean shows. (But, seriously, watch it. It’s so good.) When we consume media, it really is like we’re eating for the sake of our soul. When we take in good, wholesome music and books and podcasts, we really really really can refocus on Christ in more areas of our lives, which is, for Christians, the goal.
Refocus
It can be super easy to slowly allow our attention to drift away from Christ. The enemy knows how to assist us in being distracted, too. So, we have to fight. We have to fight against the things that distract us from Christ. Let’s be Christians focused on Christ in all areas of our lives.