My Gaze Transfixed - A New Year's Resolution

I am making only one resolution this year and it is this:
I RESOLVE to keep my gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face. 

Have you ever gotten lost in someone’s face – in the subtle recognition or mystery in their eyes? Maybe when you were holding your newborn baby for the first time or when you stood with the one you love saying your vows. 

These are pivotal, earth-shattering, trajectory-altering, heart-wrecking moments when we get lost in someone’s face. We are seduced, wooed, drawn in, and captivated. Or we are trapped, snared, tricked, and caught in the current of things that can destroy us.
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I can easily get lost looking in my daughters’ eyes. Yet, painfully, I can just as easily get lost looking at all the things I want to be…
         To do…
               To become…
                     To look like.

This year, I am resolved to be resolved to nothing else but to my Jesus.
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My King.

For when I fix my eyes on His face, I find rest. When I fix my eyes on Jesus, I ingest His Word like breathe into my lungs.

My vision will be altered and I will see souls instead of differences or means to an end. My tongue will be more able to speak truth with love than criticism with contempt. My hands will be more able to operate with compassion rather than frustration. My heart will be more hospitable to the suffering, to the hurting, to the lonely, to the left over, and to the ones that don’t look like me.

When my eyes are transfixed on Jesus’ face, He comes into focus. His vision becomes my vision. His words become my words. His hands become my hands. His will becomes my will.

This resolution, in the end, is not about me. It is all about Him. For He is what I am here for.
And when this year closes, I will look back at a season that had nothing to do with my accomplishments, but everything to do with His. I will not be the person I am today because I will resemble Him more and myself less. I want to be a reflection of Jesus, like the moon reflects the light of the sun.

It’s like the song says,
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.”

I don’t know about you but I could use some dimness to my vision – the kind that leaves the periphery in a haze. The dimness that leaves this brokenness and wretchedness that surrounds us lost in the shadows cast by the glorious shining of His brilliance. 

This resolution, in the end, is not about me. It is all about Him. ​

That the sin and death that seeps across this earth’s thirsty soil would be washed clean and purified in the flood waters of the knowledge of the rescuing sacrifice of my Savior.

Oh to be ever aware of His eyes on me – how that changes perspectives.

The fears, the dirt, the reservations, the insecurities, the loss, and the weaknesses. How they break and shatter sliding their unrecognizable shards across the floor when I, while searching to see His face, find Him already enraptured with my own.

I want to gaze into the deep eyes of the God who sees. The God who sees me.

This is my resolution,
My gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face.
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Listen to the song that inspired this post, Hillsong.