Four Great Concerns...

(Don Fortner writes this well. May my heart's cry join with his! Beth)
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by Don Fortner

"Enoch WALKED with God...." Genesis 5:24

My heart is motivated, driven and governed by four great concerns.

Here are four things I want more than anything in this world.

I am not an ambitious man. But I am ambitious for these four things. For the attainment of these four things I am prepared, by the grace of God, to sacrifice everything else.

I count all other things to be but rubbish by comparison.

1. I want to know Christ (Phil. 3:10). Yes, I believe that in measure I do know him. God has revealed his grace and glory to me in the Person of his dear Son. Still, I want a growing, spiritual, experimental knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to know all that he has done for me. I want to know him. I want to know him fully.

2. I want to be totally committed to Christ. I want to totally lose my life to Christ and in Christ, so that I can truthfully say with the Apostle Paul, "For me to live is Christ." I want to be committed to Christ as he was to the Father, so that my heart says to him in all things, "Not my will, thy will be done." It is my continual prayer that God will give me a heart--committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, committed to his will, committed to his gospel, committed to his people, committed to the cause of his glory in this world.

3. I want to be like Christ. My heart longs to be like him, conformed to him, made into his likeness. I want to be like him in love, tenderness, and thoughtfulness, in zeal, dedication, and devotion, purity, holiness, and righteousness.

4. I want to live in communion with Christ. Like Enoch of old, I want to walk with God. I know these goals are not attainable in this life. Yet, they are the things for which my soul hungers and my heart thirsts. I cannot be satisfied with less. "I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14).

"I shall be satisfied when I awake with Christ's likeness" (Psa. 17:15), but not until then.

"Enoch WALKED with God...." Genesis 5:24