Fixing our eyes on Jesus. Alexander Smiley, The Hour of
Silence, 1899 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12, 2. This is how I
am justified and forgiven. Not by the hopeless endeavor
to win and fight my way to the favor of God and the celestial
city, but by looking to Jesus alone and by leaning on Him absolutely. Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to your cross I cling. This is how I find assurance. I am tossed with tempest, overcast
with doubt, haunted with fear, while I scrutinize my own frames
and feelings But when I fix my gaze steadfastly on him, so all-sufficient,
so perfect, the morning awakens and the shadows decay. Behold,
the winter is past and the flowers appear. For my own comfort, I
would see him as a glorious sun filling my sky. This is how I
grow holy, while indeed I am bidden work out my own salvation
with fear and trembling, it must not be as if everything depended
on me. It must rather be by a perpetual
faith in Him, and a perpetual prayer to Him, who works in me
to will, and to do according to His good purpose. The battle
is not mine, but His. He sows the seed, and He ripens
the harvest. He lays the foundation, and He
puts the topstone in its fitting place. This is how I shall be
glorified in the end. Self will have vanished in the
better country, and Christ will be all. I shall follow the Lamb
wherever He goes, I shall find my safety, my peace, my victory
in keeping very close to Him. He will be familiar, and yet
He will be new every morning, and I shall discover in Him a
subject of study and wonder and worship and love which is illimitable
and unfathomable. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith. Hebrews 12, 2.