Where is Your Focus?

 

When trials, temptations and tribulations descend on you, where is your focus?  Problem solving?  Racing thoughts? The subject of your temptation?  Anger?  My brain naturally offers me lots of options, and most of them don’t seem very good.  Flight!  Fight!  (Maybe your brain is different from mine - I hope so!)

When Jesus was in the wilderness tempted by the Devil, each of his three responses mentioned God, so I know where his focus was.  

In one of our scripture passages for this week, Romans 12:2, Paul directs us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, testing to discern what is the will of God.  I wasn’t sure how to begin that, so I read the MSG translation, and read fix your attention on God.  You’ll be changed from the inside out.  Ah, If I can focus on God, God will change me. 

Romans 12:1-3(ESV) 

12 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 

3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Romans 12:1-3 MSG

[1-2] So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. [3] I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

What else does focussing on God do when we are in the middle of these trials, temptations and tribulations?  The answer is found in our second passage:  he is a safe place, he gives us strength, and helps us when we’re in trouble.

Psalm 46:1-3 (ESV) 

 1 God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
    though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah

On Sunday we welcome back Rev. Paul Beckingham.  I wonder what he does when trials, temptations, and tribulations descend?