Where is Your Focus?

Day Seventeen

I am often surprised at how easily I am distracted.  Cleaning house can take several hours as I fly off on this tangent or that, cleaning details or organizing stuff, and in the end, I have to just rush through the job.

It’s the same with running errands, I see the card store and remember that I need something there, then I go into the supermarket because I need to pick up milk, and before I know it, I’ve gone a long way out of my way and still haven’t gotten the essentials done.

At one time I had 7 volunteer jobs.  I think it was a way to distract myself from the pain of an abusive marriage.

During the summer of my divorce, I began sitting at the front of the church.  I desperately needed to hear from God, and there is almost nothing to distract me.  I still like to sit at the front.

After the divorce, I was so mentally distracted that I could only manage to pray by writing my prayers in a journal.

Sometimes I think of the devil as a sleight of hand magician: distracting us with one hand while the other seeks to pick our pockets.

Today I feel like the Lord is telling me that I’ve got to focus on the important Kingdom work that He’s given me to do.  Don’t just do something: stop and pray!

If You’re Happy, Inform Your Face

I was thinking about Bill this morning.  Bill does something that most Bulgarians don’t do—he smiles.  He smiles a lot.  It’s not that he has no problems, but Bill really gets it: that he has an Almighty God that is on his side.  In fact, many Christians (both here in Europe and in the US) don’t even get it.  Some Christians are always complaining about money, their job, health, relationships, unreliable car, you name it.  They rake over the past again and again, looking for clues there.  Often they struggle with sin in their lives.

The problem is that their focus is all wrong.  They are focused on obstacles, problems, troubles, sin, and behaviors (both theirs and others’).  The solution is so simple, and here it is:

Focus all your attention

and all your affection on Jesus.

That’s it!  If you focus your attention on Jesus, problems shrink to their proper proportions, and you begin to understand that truly nothing is impossible for you if you believe.  I told Bill that it’s like the moon.  You look at the moon and it looks so small that you can hold it in your fingers.  But the moon is really very big.  It’s just that we are very far away from the moon.  Whichever you’re closer to is the thing that seems biggest: your problems or your God (I wrote about this in greater detail in my book “Laughing in My Dreams”).  He liked that and said that he wants to use it in a sermon.  Bill is a very encouraging person.

Likewise, if you focus your affection on Jesus, you will lose all interest in sin.  You will begin to see sin for what it really is: enslavement.  One of the devil’s cleverest lies is that sin is fun.  There may be fun moments, but I have never had more fun, and more continuous fun than I’ve had since the day I completely surrendered to Jesus—not the day of my conversion or of my rededication, but total and complete surrender came just 4 years ago.  And that fun will never, ever end!  One of the coolest quotes I’ve ever read on laughter comes from “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis.  The book is supposed to be a collection of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew and protégé, Wormwood.  About Christian laughter, he says:

Something like it [laughter] is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven—a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us.  Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged.  Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

That blew me away the first time I read it.  Whenever I start to take myself too seriously, I remind myself that dignity comes from pride, and belongs in Hell.  It’s good to laugh, and especially to laugh at yourself.  As my friend, Bob, says, “God is not a killjoy!”

So listen to how you talk.  Are you always complaining?  Always unhappy, disillusioned, dissatisfied?  Always asking for prayers?  Get closer to God.  Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.  Get the Bible onto your MP3 player and listen day and night.  Just like a rocket ship to the moon, you’ll find God to be big enough to stand on.  God is good!

The Nasty-Tasting Medicine of Truth

Stop and discern.  Can you see that the enemy has released an attack to bring division among My people?  You, My faithful ones, must stand against this attack.  Do not entertain the temptation to be offended or to point the finger in accusation.  You must deal with your own heart and be righteous.  This is a time to refocus your attention away from yourself and look to Me, says the Lord.  For, I will extricate you from offense if you will allow it.

Proverbs 18:19 A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle.

The quote above was taken from today’s Spirit of Prophecy Bulletin (http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=yymmtrbab&v=001gZhKK2h2Be_D6yGxuKPSManqENpntnNJlJ2b6XiUDhnVJYpfDdKCpc92c-vJDRui5GH_DexOGdk7VBoAUQ5Ey2tvETSInK3oPxpu_KPRRw-b1LRmHF895LlJ8Wb2q6EC6wc3hl8gy8g%3D), which I subscribe to.   Frequently, these prophecies are not only right on target, but speak personally to my current situation.  Today’s prophecy is a perfect example.

Both me, personally and this ministry have been attacked by people I had thought were my friends.  And it is no surprise that these attacks were prompted by an offense that I didn’t even know that I had committed.  Instead of coming to me to find out the truth of things, these people took offense and talked about me behind my back.  Hidden in the dark, fed by supposition and goaded on by the enemy things fester and grow and rage is the result.

Over the course of this year I’ve seen other people, ministries, and churches attacked in similar manner.  Things that could easily have been resolved by honest and loving confrontation instead blew completely out of proportion and into all-out vindictive war.

The thing that shocked me most of all was to find myself being the offended person.  I thought that this person had damaged this ministry.  And so I launched all-out vindictive war on somebody who is flawed, but no more so than myself.  I tried to “save” this person from the worst of my anger by avoidance.  And in explaining my position to a mutual friend, I pointed out how much I have sacrificed to be here: “I sold my house and gave away virtually all of my belongings.  I have left behind my family—my grandson!—and friends.  This ministry has cost me a lot, and not just in terms of money.”  I continued to explain my all-consuming passion for seeing Europe come back to Christ.  Obviously, there was only one right way to look at this thing.  The person who had offended me knew that I was angry, so there was two-way avoidance going on, and my outrage grew.

Then, when I could no longer contain my anger, we finally had a confrontation yesterday.  I didn’t listen at the time, but this person’s words rang inside my head after we parted.  They got through to me, and suddenly I felt horrible about the way I had treated this person.  On top of that, God showed me that my problem was not this person, but my own pride.  Then my eyes were opened to see that I was calling it my ministry, and that I had promoted myself as being so righteous because of all the things I had sacrificed for the ministry.  I had taken my eyes off Jesus and was focused instead on the ministry and on myself.

I saw that this person had offended me, just as I had offended the others, without knowing it, and without meaning to do so.  I was finally seeing myself as the angry, unreasoning aggressor, and I didn’t like what I saw.  But I confessed my sin to God, and then to this person.  Both graciously forgave me without hesitation.

I want to reiterate: where I had gone wrong was in taking my eyes off Jesus.  So often we get caught up in Christian service that we forget that the point is not the service, but Who we serve.

And this enlightenment has helped me to have more understanding and compassion for those who I had unwittingly offended.  I forgive them and hope someday for the restoration of those relationships.  That’s not an empty hope because Jesus is all about restoration.  He is God of a Second Chance.  We all need a second chance!