One New Year’s Resolution Worth Keeping: Fix Your Eyes on Jesus

You may or may not be a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, but here’s one that I think is worth keeping.

A few years ago I came across this story from the New York Times about how couples who are married for a long time begin to resemble each other.  Sorry ladies, I know this might be the worst news you hear all day!

But have you ever noticed how couples who have been married for a really long time kinda sorta look alike? Scientist have actually done research on this. There’s this theory that couples that are married for 30, 40, sometimes 50 years, that when you look at them they resemble each other. They look like each other.  The theory is because they have lived with each other for so long, shared so many common emotions & spent all these years looking at each other that now they’ve started to look alike.

I think this is an important observation because it reminds us of this central truth: We become like what we behold.

[Tweet “We become like what we behold. @coreytrevathan #beholdJesus”]

This idea begs the question, “What are you beholding?”  What do you spend your days, your time, looking at?  Where are your eyes focused & where is your gaze fixed?

Vision matters because we become like what we behold.  As we begin this new year together perhaps it’s time reevaluate what we spend the majority of our time fixated on.

What happens when our eyes are fixed on the wrong things?  They may not even be bad things, but they are the wrong things.  What happens when we loose sight of the goal?  When we lose sight of who we want to be?  Who  we want to become?

We are always in the process of becoming.  What do you hope you will become?  Or maybe better stated, who do you hope you will become like?

The problem is we too often lose sight of the one we proclaim to love & profess to follow.

[Tweet “Too often lose sight of the one we proclaim to love & profess to follow. #beholdJesus”]

We lose sight of Jesus. Not always. And not entirely. But I think this is sometimes true of us.  Perhaps the one resolution we could set this year is to take time daily to fix our eyes on Jesus.  Because if it’s true that we begin to look like the person we spend the most time with, the person we share common emotion with, the person we look at most often, then what if that person was Jesus?  What would happen if fixed our eyes & set our gaze on Jesus of Nazareth this year?

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
Hebrews 12:1-2

Please leave a comment below. And subscribe to my blog by entering your email address & you’ll get each new post delivered right to your inbox! Thanks!