READ: 2 Corinthians 4:5 NLT
'You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake.'
Whatever you are doing today it’s vital to have a clear objective. Dithering or being unclear about your objective is frustrating, confusing and exhausting. Paul clearly didn’t suffer from this problem! He was absolutely clear that his role was to preach about Jesus, pure and simple. In a church that was very interested in the different personalities of their leaders, Paul makes it plain that he doesn’t want to be the focus of attention.
There’s a word that I love that sums this up very well. It’s the word Christocentric – centred on Christ. The calling of every Christian is to be Christocentric which means that in our everyday life we seek to put Jesus at the centre of our thinking, our relationships and our activities. Paul was a preacher and it is clear how this applied to him. He was determined not to impress people with beautiful polished sermons but to ensure that people met with Jesus and understood that he died on the cross for them. But if you are not a preacher (and most people aren’t!) your calling is also to be Christocentric. If you are a shopworker you need to ensure that your care for customers and other staff radiates the love of Jesus; as a businessman you need to act graciously and honestly towards others; as a teacher God calls you to set an example through the care and thoughtfulness that you show to your students; and as a parent you need to ensure that your patience, love and influence help your children to know Jesus for themselves.
Because Jesus is the focus of our lives, the greatest calling possible is to be his servants. A servant’s life is devoted to doing everything that the master wants. That would be an appalling way of life if you had an uncaring and bad master. But if you have the best master in the world, then to be a servant to such a person would be life at its absolute best. And we have such a master!
QUESTION: What do you need to do to make your life more Christocentric?
PRAYER: Loving Father, help me today to live as the servant of Jesus before anything else. Amen.

Released on 1 Feb 2021