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!

Lessons in Floating

Last Year – When I was here at the beautiful Adriatic Sea last year, the Holy Spirit told me to go for a swim.  I loved the beach when I was a kid—what kid doesn’t?  But as an adult, I had come to associate the sea with many discomforts: the itchy feeling of salt water dried on the skin, oily sunscreen crusted with sand, fair skin that burns despite the use of sunscreen SPF 45, the sand that gets into places it shouldn’t, and a body that’s white and lumpy and looks better clothed than in a swimsuit—intense body shame.  So it was with all that beach-hating baggage that the Holy Spirit told me to take a swim.

Despite my bags and baggage, I did take a swim.  Leaving my glasses on top of my towel, I walked toward the water.  I saw something washed up on the beach that looked like a dead jellyfish.  I’ve been stung by jellyfish.  It’s like being stung by an electric wasp—definitely an experience I don’t want to ever have again.  But instead of turning back, I just laughed.  If God wants me to swim, then He has a purpose.  “Besides,” I told myself, “it was probably just a plastic bag from somebody’s beach lunch.”

I had decided that my act of obedience meant that I should get completely wet.  So I got about waist-deep, then dove into the waves.  After paddling around for a few minutes, I thought that I was finished.  But the Holy Spirit told me: “Lay back.”  I did, and discovered something wonderful: I float like a cork!  I am so buoyant that I can even float with my head above the water, toes above the water, and bottom down.  But laying back with my ears under the water was incredibly peaceful, and little by little I felt my limbs release their muscular tension.

I took that first swim fully clothed because I didn’t have my swimsuit with me.  I understood that swimming would be something I should do every day while I was here, so I knew I needed to buy a swimsuit.  The only thing I’ve hated more than the beach is buying a swimsuit.  The last one I bought online, and it covered so much of me that it was almost a throwback to the old swimsuits they used in the early 1900’s.  I knew that if I thought too much about it, I would talk myself out of buying one, so I just plunged into a swim shop and bought one.  It’s not bad looking.

A few days after that first swim the wind kicked up, bringing bigger waves.  Thanks to a breakwater, the big waves are tamed into choppy little wavelets before they reach the swimming area by the beach.  During my floating session that day, God (who had never repeated Himself to me before) told me: “Relax!  Relax!  Relax!”  And the little wavelets shook each limb with a different rhythm and out of synch with one another.  It reminded me of a Lamaze exercise in which your coach takes an arm and your teacher takes the opposite leg and they shake them in differing rhythms.  You are supposed to practice releasing the tension in those muscles and all the others in between.  And that memory tickled me so much that I laughed out loud—and a more profound relaxation followed.  God has the greatest sense of humor!

The lesson in physically relaxing taught me to relax when I’m worried about things going wrong.  Without going into detail (which you can read about in my book “Look, Listen, Love,” available from http://www.lulu.com/), I learned that I can relax and let God work out the things that I have no control over.  And when I do really relax and release those worries, God not only works things out, but blesses me in unexpected ways.  And one of those things, you can read about in my blog post: https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/god-meets-radical-faith-with-radical-provision/.

This Year – I have returned to the beach, bringing two very dear friends with me.  The three of us have gone to the beach each day, floating and swimming, talking and laughing, praying and praising our Heavenly Father.

A lesson that God has been teaching me recently is to let go of the past—particularly past offenses and betrayals, but also past mistakes or bad choices that I need to forgive myself.  I have been working on it, releasing those people and things to God, forgiving and letting them go.  But every once in a while, the memory of these things comes to mind, robbing me of my focus and trying to rob my peace.  Whenever this happens, I try to release the memory as quickly as possible.

While floating yesterday, the Holy Spirit told me that, just as I had learned to relax my worries into God’s hands, I also need to relax my memories into His hands.  And lying there on the bosom of the sea, I did exactly that.

This morning during my prayer time, once again I found my attention wandering to a painful event.  Immediately, I said, “Let it go!  Let it go!  Let it go!” and I released the memory and returned my focus to God, my Peace.

When it comes to relaxing my grip on those memories, would it be wrong to say that I’m working on it?  I’m grateful that God is a patient Teacher.  God is good!

Contrarian Kingdom Part Two

Greetings from Cardiff!

Yesterday we went to the Senate building to pray for the Welsh Parliament.  The building is right at the docks, which historically have economic importance for Wales, being the place where so much Welsh coal was shipped to the rest of the world.  The demand for coal declined and the docks became a derelict area.  In 2005 the docks area underwent a transformation.  And now it’s a great place for people to meet and have a meal.  For our purposes, it was a great place to come and pray for revival in Wales—specifically, for a revival that will dwarf the previous revivals that started here.

In this beautiful setting in the capital of Wales, I found that for some reason I was having some trouble focusing and praying—the reason I’m here.  So in desperation, with my mind wandering this morning I finally said, “Lord, please tell me what to pray!” Sometimes desperation leads to wonderful contrarian things:

• I want to be brilliant—a genius—at faith, even if people think I’m stupid about other things.  
• I want wisdom to live out that faith.  
• I want and need discernment of the schemes of the enemy.

All my life, the thing that was guaranteed to anger me was to be called stupid or treated like I’m stupid.  And there have been plenty of people who have thought me stupid.  When I lived in California as a child, the other children teased me and called me stupid because of my Texas accent.  In New York as an adult, people occasionally mimicked me because my accent made me sound stupid to them.  Their logic being that you might be a stupid redneck because you sound like Jeff Foxworthy.  In Italy, people sometimes mistake my slow speech (Texas drawl in Italian) for a slow mind, and try to take advantage of me.  So for me to pray for a faith so smart that people think I’m stupid is inspired by God because I would never ask to be taken for stupid.  But God’s wisdom turns the wisdom of the world on its head.  And one thing I am ready to embrace above all others is God’s wisdom.

Recently I wrote a blog post about God’s contrarian logic:  https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/contrarian-kingdom/.  And in true contrarian, non-conformist fashion, I love the idea of asking for something that in my flesh I never wanted.  But there it is:  I want a faith so big that people in their flesh think I’m stupid.  It’s turning the world’s logic on its head.

Come on, people of God!  Let’s live a life that’s absolutely contrary to the world’s way!