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Behold Him!

In this end time that we are living in as young people, the world is throwing anything and everything at us to blow us off our track.  The world is keen on separating us from Christ and making us to compromise with the world.  How can we stay on our path?  
2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”  What does glory mean?  Glory in this sense means character.  When Moses asked God to show him His glory, God, in response, showed him His character.  (That story in Exodus 33 and 34).  In this verse, our glory, or our character, is exchanged for God’s glory, or His character.  
This principle is that by beholding, you become changed.  I’m sure you have noticed that if you spend time with a certain friend, you start to act and think like them.  Maybe you have also noticed that when you focus on something and think about it a lot, you start thinking of it more and more until you become like it.
So how does this relate to staying on the path that God has marked out for us?  When we behold Christ, we become changed into His image, and we think of Him a lot.  Our character becomes more like Christ.  In the same way, when we behold the things of the world, we become like those things, and we think about them a lot.  Our character becomes more like the world.  We must be careful about what we are beholding.  
When we behold anything that is not Christ, we are being transformed into the same image as those things.  It’s easy to say that you shouldn’t be beholding bad things, because then you’ll become like those bad things.  But what about good things?  You would say that friends, family, and school work, etc are good things to focus on.  But if they are taking the first place in your mind, the place that belongs to Christ, your relationship with Christ will dwindle become stagnant.  It may also decline, and if you are not careful, it could die away.  
When we are beholding Christ, we are becoming more and more like Him, and therefore walking on the path towards heaven.  When we behold Christ’s glory, goodness, suffering, self-denial, it will cause our thoughts to rise upward to heaven, and correspondingly, we will think more and act more like Christ.  
Some people run into a problem though.  They say that they cannot possibly behold Christ, because they have not made it a habit, and they are constantly thinking of other things.  The solution?  Read and study your Bible, and look for the ways that God is showing you what He’s like. Look to Christ again and ask Him to give you reminders of His character throughout the day.  He will follow through!  
Keep trusting in Jesus!

~Lilienne Stafford

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