Do you focus on Jesus?
In the last series of messages, we focused on God’s positioning system. In this series, we are going to talk about the power of focus. I will call this series “The Empowered life.”
This series is based on the book on Philippians. Remember, the church of Philippi was founded by Paul on the second missionary trip. When Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison. As some of you may know, I really enjoy studying the apostle Paul. As you read in the book of Acts, Paul, who was born Saul, was a hater and killer of Christians. His transformation to Christ was so dramatic that he brought thousands upon thousands of people to Christ. When you read the first chapter, we are getting very clear and helpful instructions on how to live the kind of life that Jesus has asked us to live. The problem most Christians have is not that we don’t understand what kind of life God has called us to live but how do we move beyond this theory to actual practice. The reason we fail in this area is because we have a hard time and trouble focusing. It’s somewhat like knowing that your destination is Albany New York, not having directions that shows us how to get there is often difficult. To put it another way, let’s say you were going to Albany New York and had some directions. But all of a sudden there was an accident or something happened. You had to get off that road, and you have no way to to know how to get to Albany. You are confused, because the one way you knew how to get there was changed by some event. Think about what happens in a situation like this. We get anxious. We don’t think straight. We try desperately to get back to where we were going to get back on the right route. We may have some idea of where were supposed to be going, but we don’t have a specific plan. When something like this happens to us as Christians, we find ourselves living, emotionally and spiritually confused lives, because we have some idea of where we should be, but we have no idea how to get back on the right course. We see in our driving scenario heading to Albany New York, if we knew that we were heading north and got sidetracked by some event or accident, and we had a compass, we can continue heading north. We would continue looking for roadsigns that can guide us back to our plan.
The answer to our problems in our dilemma, is we have to learn how to live life with a proper focus. We have to learn what God wants for us so clearly that even with some bumps in the road, events in our lives that we will cannot possibly miss it. As we read in Philippians in Chapter 1, verse 23 through 25 Paul writes; “But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my coming to you again.
In verse 25, we see that Paul is certain that he will be acquitted and released from jail. The only reason one can see for his momentary confidence is that he believes he is still needed on earth in the Lord’s service. You see my friends, Paul was not focusing on the obstacle of him being imprisoned. He was focusing on his mission. His service. His goal. We all have difficulties and roadblocks and external events that affect our lives and it is sometimes really difficult to get a handle on these external behaviors until we first get a handle on the person that lives inside of us.
If you were to see me and look at me on the outside. You would have no idea of what is really going inside my head. Or how I really felt about a particular issue or person or what is taking place in my spiritual life. The same can be said, if I were to look at you. You see, the most important thing about focus is to focus and work where we can be honest with ourselves and with our Almighty God and that is our inner selves. Most Christians, myself included, have not taken the time to reflect on ourselves internally to the point that we really understand these things. In other words, we are sometimes strangers to our own selves. Not really knowing the inner person, much better than our friends or family know us.
What I have found is that the reason for this is because we don’t really want to know what is going on inside of us. Deep down inside our souls there is a fear of being exposed. We often have a fear of showing our weaknesses, and our faults. In my own life, I almost destroyed my relationship with my wife for this very same reason.
You see until we are willing to really examine who we are and what our core values are and what really makes us tick, it will be difficult to focus on the other truly important areas in our lives. Before we continue on let’s take a look at 2 Corinthians Chapter 13. After writing 1 Corinthians, Paul thought it necessary to go back to Corinth and see if he could help resolve some of their problems. He wrote this letter after he had left. In verse five it states; “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you — unless indeed you fail the test?”NASU
Paul wrote this to the church in Corinth, because he wanted Christians to continuously look at their inner selves to test themselves. I see many times, Christians getting too busy doing “church stuff” and very quickly forgetting about the inner person. That is why it is necessary to do a regular internal check up. Our Soul Test.
Ask yourself these questions
1) Do I truly strive to live my life, as Jesus lived His?
2) Is God my first love? Do you demonstrate that in your life, what is it you do right now to show God is first in your life? Make a list of what you do to prove to yourself that God you is first in your life.
3) If you died today, what work for God’s Kingdom would go undone because of your absence?.
4) Are you closer in your relationship to God today than you were last year. What About five years ago? 10 years ago? What about when you first came to know Christ.
This week think about these answers and feel free to write about it on the web site. We will continue this next week.
Your In Christ,
Pastor Bob
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