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Staying Focused
One of the largest problems Christians have today is balancing their spiritual and physical lives. We can get so focused on our work, school or hobbies that we lose focus on what’s most important. Also, when facing a very large or long task, we can become discouraged, because we don’t see the end in sight. Sometimes, even causing us to give up.
We can become so overwhelmed with the things of this world, that we can begin to lose sight of why we started our Christian walk in the first place. Many things can overpower our focus. Work, school, hobbies, etc... can all cause us to lose focus on God, and what we need to do to be right with Him.
James 1:2-8 “2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 77 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”
In this passage we read that we all encounter struggles. We can’t feel that we are the only one going through hard times, because everyone has struggles they deal with daily. We also see from this passage, that every time we prevail against a trial, it helps us to conquer it again the next time we encounter it. We must remember to ask for wisdom from God and have the right attitude while doing so. Most importantly, we can’t view any task or trial as impossible because in 1 Corinthians 10:13 we see that God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able to handle. Knowing this, we can be encouraged everyday, understanding that we can conquer anything that comes our way.
We also need to remember that we cannot do everything at once like we might want. We are promised as Christians that we will experience difficulties (2 Tim 3:12), and we need to not dwell on the fact that some days will be hard. There is a saying that I am very familiar with, and that is that “You eat an elephant one bite at a time.” We can use this in our spiritual walk and say that we just need to take it one day at a time and not focus on accomplishing everything at once but focus on the good things that we do that day. Eventually, if we put enough good days together, we will end up accomplishing great things we never would have imagined.
One of the main reasons I think people leave the church is because of getting overwhelmed by earthly things and not believing they can do what God wants them to do. Often, looking out at the world we end up only focusing on the negative. We see all the stress brought on by our job or school. We are disappointed that our society openly accepts wrong and ungodly behavior. It’s easy for us to become discouraged and distracted by all these things that are in the world surrounding us, but we need to remember that we can take it one day at a time. We must stay focused on God, then we can get through anything. Have you ever noticed that young sunflowers follow the sun (heliotropism) as a day goes on? We as Christians don’t need to focus on the sun, but the Son of God and take this life one day at a time.
- Carson Everett
