What excites you?
Have you ever been in love? It may have been another individual, or the new car you’ve purchased. Do you remember how it warped your perspective? How did it change the way you acted? Conversation Topics?
Has Jesus captured your heart in the same way? Why or why not? It will show.
X-Ray Questions
The following questions are from David Powlison in an article called X-Ray Questions: Drawing out the Whys and Wherefores of Human Behavior from The Journal of Biblical Counseling (Vol 18, #1, Fall 1999). Walk through at least 5 of these questions truthfully.
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- What do you seek, aim for, and pursue?
- What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?
- What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey?
- Whose performance matters? On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest? Who can make it better, make it work, make it safe, make it successful?
- Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, or security?
- Whom must you please? Whose opinion of you counts? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection? Whose value system do you measure yourself against? In whose eyes are you living? Whose love and approval do you need?
- How do you spend your time? What are your priorities?
- What do you think about most often? What preoccupies or obsesses you? In the morning, to what does your mind drift to instinctively?
- What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?
- What are your characteristic fantasies, either pleasurable or fearful? Daydreams? What do your night dreams revolve around?
Work it Out
Write out three columns on a sheet of paper: What you love, why you love it, love for that vs. love for Jesus.
Filling in the table in light of your answers to the questions above, examine why some of the things are so important to you. Lastly, compare each one for Jesus: are you more impressed with, excited about, and affectionate toward that thing/person, or toward Jesus? Why do you think that is?