Where is your Focus?
In my reading today I saw a point that rang so true that I just had to share it with someone. Hopefully it will be you. It will appear simple at first and yet I believe as you think it out you will find it can have life changing application. Where do you put your focus when talking to others?
You see when you walk out there in the world, you are in the world. We are cautioned to be in the world but not of the world. John 17:14-15 shows Jesus praying to the Father that we would not be taken out of the world but protected by God from the evil around us. Stay with me now, when we look at what we focus on.
Here we are, all out in the open walking around doing our thing each day. Some of us are working, some of us are wishing we had some work, and many of us somewhere in-between. We are healthy. We are sick. We have it together or we are falling apart. Each of us is in some state of mind, body and spirit. Each of us are either aware of God or we aren’t. Walking in grace and peace, or some other state of our walk with God, we are all on our own journeys doing the best we can.
Here is where the question of focus comes in. Enter someone else in our lives. They are at their own particular walk with as much grace as they will allow themselves in that moment. They may be having problems, most of the time there is something troubling all of us, and it is a walk that strengthens our faith or breaks us down to our knees. It is walks that each of us must face each day, no matter what our circumstances are. So, one last time I ask, where is your focus?
Here is where it came to me. Often I hear the focus is on the journey and the struggle. I watch in my life and others and I find my mind leaning in the direction of their story and their struggle. If only they would do this or that, life would change for them. Perhaps it even brings to mind a solution that I would like to guide them to or often it feels like I need to push just a little harder. My focus is on them and my solutions. Today I realized when I am in that mode I am “in” the world and all its influences. Read this, do that, try this, the list goes on and on. When I do this what am I putting my faith in?
Another approach that I would like to suggest in our walks is to change our focus. Instead of looking so deeply into the problem and coming up with their solutions or our own, how about we look to what God the creator says? What I mean is, not to use the word against them or their situation, but to look at what the word says about how we should be. Make our service to God the focus and be the hearts, mind and spirit in partnership with Him.
When someone is hurting, we can provide love and support. Wouldn’t that be better than reminding them that it was their sin that got them there? When someone is sick, can we not pray with them on the spot instead of promising that we will later, or perhaps telling them how they should have taken better care of themselves? Can we just focus and ask the Holy Spirit what to do in the situation we find ourselves in?
When we focus on God’s word and His promises to us, when we search for meaning in the stories and parable teachings of Jesus, and when we pray and listen to the Holy Spirit we have a different focus. We are working in faith and direction with all the resources God has provided for us. We walk body, mind and spirit giving God all we have and take our focus off what is happening or being said. We put it back on what God is doing with it all. We put our faith back where it will work out to solve our problems and our struggles. We take it off the struggles and walk in faith with the journey.
My prayer for anyone that reads this is that they would shift their focus daily and often moment by moment back to all that God has for you. That the Holy Spirit would work mightily in your daily life and often moment by moment. And last, but certainly not least, that you would experience the gift of grace given to you by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in your life daily.
Be blessed and be a blessing to someone today.
