Keeping Your Focus Where it Belongs
2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Last week I spoke about looking at Heaven and not at the things of this earth. I talked about how we have become so focused on what’s going on in the earthly battles that we have almost completely lost sight of the things that as God’s people we should be doing. I have spoken over and over again about we should be trying to bring people to Christ before we expect them to be perfect (even though we ourselves are not and will not be perfect) so that the Holy Spirit can convict them in their heart about the things that they need to leave behind. You know the old saying you can’t see the forest for the trees? Sometimes we do that in our lives, we get focused on something and we miss the beauty of God all around us. We get fixated on the negativity or even on the good works we are trying to do and we miss the things God may send us to do or see and wind up missing a blessing He may send our way.
I read this story from Daily Living For Seniors of a pastor who told this story of how he spent a summer teaching in Mexico and took both of his children with him. To pass the time as they drove, his 13-year-old son watched for license plates. The trip to Mexico netted him plates from 24 states!So when they started back, the son was almost halfway to having seen plates from all 50 states. And their return trip would take them through Yellowstone National Park—a license plate collector’s paradise. By the morning of the second day there, he had just one more state to go: Delaware.When the three stopped to see Yellowstone’s magnificent sights, the boy wouldn’t even glance at them. He preferred to run up and down the parking lots, looking at license plates. He had become so obsessed with finding that Delaware plate, it was as if his life depended on it. When they stopped near the picturesque Yellowstone Falls, he kept looking for license plates.“Come here! You’ve got to see it!” the father heard. As they ran to the parking lot, they saw a blue Volkswagen bus with Delaware license plates. The family still has that picture, and even today, that picture that tells more about what they did in Yellowstone than anything else.It’s easy to become so focused on the petty things of life that you miss the big things that really matter. So don’t let life’s distractions keep you from focusing on God. Instead, concentrate on what really matters in life: knowing God and making Him known!
If you keep your focus on Him you will find Him working in your life and that He will change you into the person He wants you to be. He will make the changes in your life that Colossians talks about; 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.[Colossians 3:7-10]
Pray that God would reveal to you the things in your life that compete for His attention and ask Him to help you focus on Him over and above everything else.
Be Blessed,
~ Pastor Floyd