Nov 12, 2018
With a sober mind, set
your hope on the grace we receive when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.
1Peter 1:13
Don't let the world
cloud your judgment, stay focused on eternal things instead of temporary ones.
One of the greatest ingredients of success (and failure) is
the issue of FOCUS!
As a young boy, I always loved to play baseball. As soon as I was old enough, my parents let
me start playing in the local kids leagues, and I became a baseball
junkie. Throwing and catching came easy,
but the hitting took some time. It
seemed like the bat never went where the ball was coming. About the third year of playing, my coach
made a keen observation that helped me start hitting well --- he suggested I
keep my eyes open and WATCH the ball hit the bat! Wow… what a difference that made! For some reason, I had come to believe the
ball would go farther if I closed my eyes while swinging J. Soon, I was hitting line drives, and ended up
batting cleanup for much of my youth.
Good lesson: The
secret to hitting a baseball happens to be FOCUS. It’s also the secret to running a business,
raising children, mastering a project, growing a marriage, building a career,
and pursuing God. If we don’t learn how
to stay focused, we’ll never get very far.
That’s what makes today’s generation struggle so much … we
have devalued the importance of FOCUS.
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Media has trained us to be scanning for many
threads of activity – from video games to news.
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We expect our brain to drive a car while talking
on the phone, listening to music, and eating French fries.
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Changing jobs and careers has become the norm,
never allowing us to grow expertise in an area.
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Our schedules are so cluttered, we see people
seldom finish anything they start, and see less quality in the work
accomplished.
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Even Christians who surrendered their lives to
Jesus find themselves unable to focus on regular prayer, or a daily devotional
reading, or weekly worship.
Sadly – ALL of the things that distract us are temporary ones! Just like hitting a baseball, we find
ourselves struggling to keep our eye on the ball, and more concerned about the
crowd noise, the chatter of the defense, the atmospheric conditions, or the type
of bat we’re using.
Hitting is simple … stay focused on the ball and swing the
bat to meet the ball. Following God is
pretty simple too … stay focused on Jesus and obey His principles. If we’re ever going to find success
navigating through this life as followers of Jesus, we’re going to have to learn
how to stay focused on Jesus, and not on all of the other things around us.
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