How’d does God look to you right now? View 1 or View 2? What are you focused on?
What exactly does it mean to be focused on God?
Does it mean to read your Bible everyday?
or
To pray for hours or …even all the time?
or
To walk around giving out tracts?
or
To tell all your friends, “God bless you!”?
or
To never watch any TV or to never get on FB or to never read any secular books or to never listen to any secular music or to never go anywhere besides church and the grocery store (and only then when absolutely necessary)?
Well, maybe… but I kinda doubt it.
I mean, most of those things are great and all (and a bit exaggerated ;), but…
To be focused on God is different than that I think.
Many people might think that in order to focus on God they have to withdraw from everything else… and I’m not saying that’s not good to do every once in awhile, but I think that we are called to live lives that are focused on God, IN THE WORLD, (I know, scary, right?)
It’s hard to focus on God when there are things all around that can distract us. I should know, I’m very, very, VERY easily distracted. I mean, you put a mirror in the same room as me and I’m a goner!
Jkjk!
But seriously, it’s hard to stay focused on God and not let the focus shift to ourselves and what we want.
Try looking at your finger again. Focus on it.
Notice anything about the things around your finger when you’re focused on it?
They become blurry.
That’s how our lives are supposed to work. We’re supposed to become so focused on God that everything else in life, ourselves included, become a blur to us. They don’t matter, nothing else matters besides following God and bringing glory to Him. I repeat, bringing glory to Him. That, right there, is our purpose, our focus in life.
Do you remember what happened at the beginning, when I had you do number 2?
Try it again. Hold up you finger, but focus on whatever’s behind it.
What happened?
Your finger should have become blurry and hard to distinguish.
This is what happens to our view of God in our lives and our understanding of His will when we focus on things besides bringing glory to Him with our lives. It especially happens when we focus on bringing glory to ourselves with our lives.
In John 9 it says this,
“1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"God does his work to bring glory to Himself through the bad things in life.
3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me.”
We are also to do His work to bring glory to Him, through our lives and through our weaknesses as long as there are days.
So, what does it mean to have your life focused on God?
Well, in my humble opinion, it is this:
To live our lives in a way that we concentrate on doing everything to bring glory to God.
So, let me ask you a question.
Where’s your focus?
Which view do you have?
1 or 2?
1) Can you clearly see God in your life? Or is He made blurry by other things?
2) How can you bring your life’s focus to God?
3) How can you glorify God with your life?
4) How are you not glorifying God and instead bringing glory to yourself with your life?
These are questions you need to answer for yourself, but I’m gonna share my answers with you.
1) No, not really. He’s slowly becoming clearer and clearer, but I often let other things, my own selfish desires, guys, media, friends, sinful thoughts, etc… become my focus and cloud my mind and view of God’s working.
2) Read my Bible consistently. Take time separated from things that distract me from Him to talk to Him and to just think… to just be still. To daily surrender my life to Him and His will.
3) Respect and love my family. Be a good steward. Do everything without complaining. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Put others ahead of myself. Share Christ’s light with others. Revel in God’s joy and hope.
4) By being selfish. By drawing undue attention to myself. By allowing my sinful desires to control my actions. By using my mouth in negative ways.
They’re not easy questions to answer are they?
And the answers aren’t usually easy things to deal with and change. But I strongly encourage you to answer the questions for yourself and then, go to God with them. He’ll help you. He’ll take your heart in what ever condition it’s in and mold it, if you are truly willing to surrender it to Him and His glory.
So. Here’s the big Q. Are you ready to Focus?
