One thing and more.

If joy was easy it would be less joyful.
My best friend is unfriendly in his devotion to me.
Revelation is better held than observed
When you need to shout – whisper
Freedom results in a life of service to others while bondage has only self.


It seems like mankind keeps trying to make God into a very small image, one that is easy to grasp. This may come from our desire to move Him where we will and control Him. I believe the reality of God is that most of His beauty is hidden in extremes. It is like God takes two extremes and offers them to us as a snap shot of who He is. He does this, not like a coin having two sides, but as two very different things being the same thing. It is like the God of three who is one.
Could it be that God loves that? Does He love the busy worshipper, the simple proclaiming of profound truths, the humility of greatness and the devotion of the distracted lover? Man would tend to say, “let me be glorified by my achievement”, but God says, “enjoy living”. One is the pursuit of an idea so that we can arrive, the other is daily enjoying the gift of life we have been given. While we may think that the focused pursuit will have the best results, we miss that reality that we are made for relationships.

To practice the presence of the Lord is to surrender your focus, to a partnership with God. And then, since you are walking with God, others will be freely entering and exiting your daily life because he invited them in. So now the life of focus is filled with God invited distractions. Your ability to stay on trask and achieve is interrupted by divine desire to have your life full, but full of what? Living!
There are numerous Christians seeking to grow into maturity in Christ Jesus by cutting off the things of life so that they can focus on God and mature. This may be good for a season but it only leads to immaturity. We are called to be light in the dark. We need to be more humble and seek not to protect our self and our ideas as much as live out fully the life God has called us to, a life of living in the extremes with Him.

Over the past few years I have heard messages about the “one thing”. I have listed below some of the text from those messages. Please note that the “one thing” was different for each person. This is God’s way of extremism. He could have easily of given us an outline of devotion. But instead He gave us Himself in a relationship that is expressive, simple, complex …. We are called to know the unknowable. What could be more exciting than that? Oh, by the way. Some of us will have one “one thing” and others of us a few more.

(Psalms 27:4) One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple.

(Ecclesiastes 7:18) It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them.

(Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22) Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

(Luke 10:42) but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

(Philippians 3:13) Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,