Our focus determines our fate. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, there is an old saying, “You are what you think.” What are you focusing on? What are your goals? Do you have goals? Is there someone or something that drives your thoughts?
Whether we realize it or not, there is something or someone who drives our thoughts. Perhaps the more appropriate question is, do you know who or what that is? Recognizing how we are driven is key to making changes in our lives. We must change our driving force to make lasting changes in our lives.
As much as we may like to deny it, there are only two driving forces at work in this world—good and evil. Unfortunately, evil often masquerades as good, tricking us to focus on it rather than the true good. Our focus is on what appears to be good but results on bad unintended consequences. It is often shrouded in selfishness, meaning what we think will make us look good.
Our focus is often on the temporary. We focus on this world. We focus on today, tomorrow, next week. Being preoccupied by the goings on of this world takes our focus away from what it truly important, what is truly good—eternity.
Our lives may be long by human standards. We may live into our eighties, nineties, or perhaps live to be one-hundred years old. Yet that is all very temporary when compared to eternity. Our focus for those years can be momentary, on the here and now, or we can choose to focus on the eternal.
If we truly understood what was at stake, we just might make different choices. We might live life with urgency to tell others about Jesus, while also living slower lives, deciding not to chase the temporary objects of this world. We will admit this world is temporary in one breath and continue to chase the world’s glories the next.
Folks, if we want to focus on eternity, we must first be willing to give up this world. We must see it for what it is—temporary. We must allow God to put eternity into our hearts. The drive in our lives must change from being worldly to being eternal.
I pray we all set aside the temporary for the eternal. I pray we allow God to plant eternal desires in our hearts. I pray each one of us takes time to evaluate our focus and what’s behind it. Desire the eternal. Focus on eternity. Allow God to put eternity in your heart. Fix your eyes on the unseen.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Marty Pressey 