What is Your Focus?

For the last several months, we’ve studied the book of Acts and anyone who has read it knows it is centered on the Acts of the Apostles and the how the Holy Spirit worked in and through them. A central character or person in the book is the Apostle Paul who wrote a significant amount of the New Testament. As we follow Paul’s like through the book, we first encounter someone who is fully opposed to Jesus – His enemy – and persecutes the followers of Jesus, even unto death. He was not a man of grace or mercy and was proud of the role he played at the time. Then we see him encounter Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) and his life was totally changed. As a result, he became the mouthpiece of Jesus to the Gentiles and took several missionary journeys planting churches as he went. 

Everything Paul was before he was converted into a follower of Christ, God used in him to bring others to Christ. Paul was a new man with a myopic focus on pleasing God and pressing for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:13-14). This is significant to understand, because we, too, are new creatures when we are converted into Christ followers. Old things are passed away and all things are made new (2 Cor 5:17). 

Therefore, we must die to sin (Gal 5:24), after we are saved from God’s wrath through belief in Jesus, God’s son. Paul’s life teaches us that when we place our focus on what God has called us to do and be, while we may stumble and fall, we won’t stay there. If we are focused on what God has purposed for us, we can change the world around us. We have to be willing and obedient. It’s up to us to choose to focus on God or not. We have free will and we get to choose obedience or rebellion. 

The fact is that if we’re not obedient, we are rebellious. There is no middle ground or half credit – partial obedience is disobedience. Our future is up to us. Blessings or curses are in our choices and the more we focus on being obedient to God and His will (Deut 11:26-28), the more blessings we will receive from Him (Luke 11:28, Rom 2:6-8). God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – He changes not. The more we, as Christ followers, study His word and hide it in our hearts, the less we’ll sin against Him (Psa 119:11).  We will recognize how very much we need Him and not just for what He can do for us, but because of who He is. Just as anyone or anything we spend time and focus on, we get to know them better and the better we know Jesus, the more we love and adore Him – the more we want to please Him. 

So where is your focus? Pleasing God? Pleasing yourself? If it’s the latter, I strongly encourage you to reconsider. If you’re focused mainly on pleasing yourself, you will never be content. Seek God first (Matt 6:33)! He won’t disappoint.