Why is it that a medium powered laser can cut through metal in a matter of seconds, but the world’s most powerful spotlight only makes that metal warm? Would you believe the answer lies in unity? Let me explain.
The laser light is described simply as a bunch of excited molecules with mirrors at each end. Some molecules die, and in that process, they release something called a photon – or a particle of light. Now this is where it all starts coming together.
As that newly released photon moves along, it comes in contact with other molecules, which prompt them to release their photons. These photons always seem to play follow-the-leader. So very quickly, three is a huge army of photons following each other. It is this unity that gives their focus such awesome power.
A spotlight on the other hand has just as many photons, but they are all going in separate directions. As a result, they are unfocused, and this causes most of their energy to be wasted, because there is no focus.
So we can say that a small laser is much more powerful than a larger spotlight all because of its singular focus.
How would you like this church to be that focused? Can you imagine what all we could do for Jesus if we were that focused? For that matter, can you imagine all the things you could do in your walk with Christ if you were that focused?
That would be awesome, but we have trouble doing that, don’t we? We get distracted by the things of this world and that causes us to turn our focus away from Jesus and onto other things. And those distractions can be very dangerous.
Studies have shown that if a car is going 70 mph, just the few seconds it takes for a driver to open his cell phone and glance at the number, can cause him to hit something in front of him, or to go off the road completely – BEFORE THEY REALIZE WHAT IS HAPPENING! So, even the smallest, or the least amount of time being distracted can have fatal consequences.
Would you want a surgeon to be distracted, even for one second, if you were the one being operated on? Certainly not! You would demand that surgeon be fully focused.
Last week I talked about vision, and the need to have a Godly vision in our lives. And today, I want to talk about something else that we need. I want to talk about focus. The first thing we need to do is …
1. START FOCUSING ON GOD
We all know that the Great Commission is found in MATTHEW 28:19-20 is to go into all the world and make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then we are told to teach them everything we have learned. And to let them know that Jesus will always be with them.
In JOHN 15:5 Jesus tells us that He is the vine and we are the branches, and that if we stay in Him, He will stay in us. That means that if we never leave Jesus, He will be with us no matter how far we travel or where we are.
But to have that depth of relationship with Him, we need to focus on Him. That does not mean to occasionally think about Him, or just acknowledge that He exists. That means to focus fully totally on Him above everybody and every thing else. There is a passage that tells of a Pharisee asking Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Jesus answered him in …
MATTHEW 22:37
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
That is a pretty tall order, isn’t it? We are to think about God all the time! We are to love God all the time. We are to depend upon Him in every situation we find ourselves in, and we are to submit our will to His in a full and complete manner. We are to desire nothing more in life than to do God’s will, and see others come to Him.
Research has shown little correlation in a church’s location and its growth. Studies show that the only real thing that is involved in a church’s growth is getting back to basics through teaching and living Jesus Christ. Now, the teaching part, most churches have down. It is the living part that churches have trouble with.
The churches that grow do not need everyone to come in and sit down each Sunday, enjoying their time. It needs people who are so interested in living for Jesus that they will literally go out and advance the cause of Jesus through the people they come in contact with.
In JOHN 12:32, Jesus said,
‘If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me.’
A church needs members who are excited about the church; who find the church a wonderful place to be and get involved. Why does a church need these things? Of course, to grow so it can sustain itself, but more importantly, the church needs excitement in its membership so that the members have a desire to grow in Christ, and a desire to see others come to Christ.
And if a church has members who are interested in the church that much, that church will touch more people for the Lord than churches who only have members who like to get involved in the church for one hour on Sunday.
But to feel that way about their church, members need to focus on why they go to church in the first place. But to have that focus, we must …
2. STOP CONCENTRATING ON THE MONSTER
What is the definition of ‘monster’? The dictionary gives several definitions of ‘monster.’ It says it is ‘something of strange or terrifying shape.’ It also defines ‘monster’ as ‘something of extreme ugliness or wickedness.’
‘Something strange and terrifying.’
‘Something ugly, wicked.’
Now, you might say you do not have a monster like that in your life. I would say you do. As a matter of fact, I would say all of us do. The monster I am talking about is self-pride. The act of thinking about what we want, what we think we need, and about self, instead of thinking about God.
There is a passage in the Old Testament that describes what we do. It is talking about people who are filled with self-pride, and what that looks like to God. I will just read a few verses to you.
PSALM 10, verses -
2- ‘In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the meek who are caught in the schemes he devises.’
Have you ever devised a plan, or scheme, to manipulate others into doing what you want them to do?
3- ‘He boasts of the cravings of his heart – he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.’
Have we ever bragged about something we did? Did you know that in doing that, you actually reviled the Lord?
4- ‘In his pride, the wicked does not seek God; in all his thoughts, there is no room for God.’
When we busy ourselves with doing what we want, or what we think we need, we have no focus left to put on God. That makes us wicked.
10- ‘His victims are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength.
People who are very focused on taking care of themselves; getting ahead on the job; amassing money; or even making sure they work hard enough to make them feel secure are hurting other people, whether they realize it or not.
They might be hurting their families by being away on the job so much, or they might be hurting a co-worker by depriving them of overtime they need more than you do. Any time a person is totally focused on doing what they think they need to do, they are always hurting other people, and they are always hurting God.
But what amazes me, is that these same people who have no room in their hearts for God will always say God has forgotten them in their time of need.
In verse 11b, it says of these people;
‘ … he covers his face and never sees.’
The monster in most people’s life is the monster of self-focus, or commonly called ‘pride.’ It is false pride that causes us to be spiritually ugly, spiritually wicked, and spiritually cruel. When we are so focused on what is happening around us in the world, we have no room at all in which to focus on God. And that causes us to cover our face and never see God or what He wants from us.
So we need to start focusing on God, but to do this, we need to stop focusing on the monsters in our lives, and the chief monster is one named “Me.”
It is okay to be proud, but it is a sin to be prideful. Let me give you an example by reading to you a passage in …
2 KINGS 5:1-3
‘Now Namaan was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier – BUT – he had leprosy.’
Verse 1 tells us that Namaan had much going for him. He was the commander in chief of the army; he was considered a great man by the king; and he had seen many military victories for his army. It doesn’t say this, but I would imagine that he was everything his mamma wanted him to be, too.
Did Namaan have a reason to feel proud? I think so. I think he had every reason to be proud of his accomplishments because that showed how focused he was and how much of a good worker he was. All these things are good things in a person’s life.
But Namaan let it go past where it should have gone. He let himself go from proud to prideful. He was used to people showing him an inordinate amount of respect. And we see how he reacts when they don’t.
In verse 9-11, we read where Namaan goes to Elisha’s house and knocked on the door. Elisha sent a servant to answer, and that upset Namaan. He figured that someone of his high stature would surely make Elisha, the great and famous prophet, come to the door personally.
In verse 12, it tells of how he flew into a rage and left when he was told to bath in a river that was not clean. After all, a person of his great stature would have been used to the finer things in life, right?
But thankfully, in verse 14, Namaan becomes humble and dips himself seven times in the dirty Jordan River, and that resulted in his being cured of leprosy.
Like I said, it is okay to be proud of different things as long as it doesn’t slip over into Pridefulness. For instance, there is nothing wrong with a grandparent pulling out a photo of his grandson. He is proud of his family line. And he feels that pride because of the love and happiness in his heart.
LUKE 2:33, talks about the pride Joseph and Mary felt about Jesus.
‘The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him.’
Being proud is okay to a point, but there is a big difference in being proud and being prideful.
Pridefulness is a sin because it causes you to view yourself as being better than other people. And when we feel that we are better than others, the first thing we start doing is judging others. And when we judge, we always judge others by their past performance. The trouble with that is, just as we progress over time, they also do. But if we are busy judging them, we have no room to see their growth, and therefore, we do not offer true forgiveness for what they may have done or said.
That is what pride does to us. I would say there is probably no greater spiritual danger to God’s people than the temptation to pride, in all its various forms.
Several hundred years ago, a list was made up of the seven deadly sins. Pride was at the top of that list. Christians of that time were well aware of the spiritual dangers of pride.
Scholars believe that pride was the first sin that caused Lucifer, the prince of the angels, to fall from heaven. Pride was involved, at least in part, in the original sin and fall of Adam and Eve: they were told that eating the forbidden fruit would cause them to “be like God.” That is why I say that pride is probably the most dangerous spiritual temptation we face; because it causes us to instantly and totally take our focus away from God and put it on ourselves.
What are you proud of today? Is it “self-focused” or “other-focused”? Does your pride cause your head to swell at how great you are, or how much good you have done? If it does, get rid of it!
We know that we have to keep focusing on God at all times lest the devil come in and give us sinful things to think about. One of those sinful things is thinking we are so much better than someone else.
And to have proper focus, we must be willing to …
3. REFOCUS
A young woman was getting married and she was very nervous. Her father was going to walk down the aisle with her and so he gave her some words of wisdom she could focus on so she wouldn’t worry about anything else.
He told her to focus on the aisle as they walked down together. He said that if she focused on the aisle, she wouldn’t think about being nervous.
And then he said when they get to the end of the aisle; she should focus on the altar. Again, if she put her whole focus on the altar, she would not be thinking of anything that would upset her.
And finally, he said that if she would focus on the hymn they would play, it would take her mind off everything else.
She said that was too much to think about right then, so the father said for her to shorten it. He said just remember
· Aisle
· Altar, and
· Hymn
As they begin their journey down the aisle, everyone got a kick out of her as she recited, “Aisle altar hymn - aisle altar hymn - aisle altar hymn.”
We need to do with God what she was doing. We need to put all of our focused attention on Him, to the exclusion of everything else. We need to be intent on our thoughts of God, and stop being so blasé about Him.
In the movie, “City Slickers”, Billy Crystal plays a man who is befuddled by mid-life crisis, and so he plans a trip to discover himself. He invites two other guys to go on a vacation with him to a dude ranch.
They end up meeting Curly, who is played by Jack Palance. Curly is a rough and tumble type cowboy who tells Billy Crystal that there is only one thing in life.
And he was correct. There is only one important thing in life. That is God Almighty, the Creator of everything, and the One who should be the focus of everything we do, think, and say.
Do you have anything or anybody in your life that is actually worth dying for? It is easy to say “yes”, but in reality is there? We need to have someone in our life that is that important. We need to have a hero; someone we can follow; someone we can put our full trust in. Do you have a person like that now? Of course you don’t, because the only One that fits that description in every category is God Almighty.
As Christians, we need to refocus our focus away from where we have put it and back on to God. Whatever it is you spend the most time focusing on, from money to relations outside the marriage, it is all lust. And lust is a sin because it keeps your focus off God.
What does sin do to you? It shows you a beautiful exterior – that hides a gruesome torture chamber inside. It promises you the moon and all its glory – just to give you the grave. It offers you great esteem and pleasure, but gives you filthy reputations and an eternity in a lake of fire.
And everything I just mentioned stems from having prideful hearts. We love to go into beautiful places. Look at the front of most bars and clubs. You will see bright colors and flashing signs. We love to soar to new heights, explore new territories. It makes us feel like we are conquerors. But when we conquer for pride sake, we end up in the grave of a sinner. And we all love to have others look up to us and acknowledge what we do, but when we crave that attention; it sends us to hell – because it steals our focus away from the Lord.
Because pride is the biggest hindrance to our focus on Jesus, we know that it is not a gift of the Holy Spirit. In reality, it is the first pallbearer in our spiritual death. So if Christians are not to be prideful, what are some of the things a Christian can feel?
The answer is found in Paul’s letter to the …
GALATIANS 5:22-23
‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control… ‘
So we must learn how to refocus our attention from all the sinful things that pride offers us, to God. But exactly how can we do that?
We fix the problem only after we …
4. RECOGNIZE WHAT THE PROBLEM REALLY IS
Simply put, we look at things with a wrong perspective. If we can see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or feel it, we trust it. We have a hard time looking at something from a spiritual perspective.
A good example is when I got sick years ago. The doctors gave me the worst prognosis. My sister told me to pray for healing. Now, I knew that God could heal, but I just wasn’t sure God would heal – me. Does that doubt sound familiar?
See, I was looking at that from a worldly perspective. I prayed anyway, and I not only prayed for my healing, but I prayed for my unbelief. See, I really identified with the father who came to Jesus after Jesus healed his son, saying, “I do believe; help me overcome my disbelief.”
Without the Lord, we cannot see anything but a worldly perspective. We are like Asaph wrote about in …
PSALM 73:21-23
‘When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You.’
It is only with the Lord in our hearts that we can overcome this hopeless situation. We find out more about that in …
PSALM 73:16-17
‘When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me – till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood …’
Let me close by summarizing this message for you in some very short sentences.
We are apart from God, partly because of our focus. When our focus is turned to put the spotlight on us, we become very prideful; the very thing God hates. But that is not the only reason we are apart from God.
It is what we believe about salvation. We think it has to be complicated to be true. Surely, something simple cannot work as well, or be worth as much, as something complicated!
When I was in high school, our history teacher gave us a test. He said the test would have one question that was in three answers. He said the test would be 55 minutes long.
With that, he gave us the test packet. It was about 10 sheets of paper, stapled together, with the top sheet having the one question on it. He then set the timer and said, “Go!”
The question was, “What 3 things happened in the year 1492?”
The three correct answers were: The Pilgrims sailed for America; the Pilgrims reached America; and the Pilgrims began colonizing America.
I think everyone of us thought of those answers since we had just finished studying about the Pilgrims, but those answers were way to easy! The real answer must be more involved or we wouldn’t have all this time and all this paper to write on!
I sat there trying to remember everything I had ever heard about Pilgrims before, just to come up with nothing. Finally, when he said we had one minute left, I wrote: “The Pilgrims came over. The Pilgrims families came over. The Pilgrims were very happy.”
I flunked the test. Along with every other student in the class. We were all looking so hard for the answer we failed to recognize the simple answer when we saw it.
The teacher told us the scores would not count, but that he did that to teach us a lesson that would be valuable the rest of our lives. The lesson was to focus on the simple truth and not on other things.
To know Jesus as Lord, we only need to focus on the single truth: He is the Son of God, come to be the sacrifice for our sins, so that by choosing to believe in Him, we can go to Heaven.
That is the truth. What are you believing in that would keep you from seeing it for what it is? Left to what we have already learned in our lives, we would only continue to stumble all around the truth without ever stumbling into it, because we do not focus on the truth.
That is why God has allowed other believers to cross our paths. They help us to see things the way they really are. Once we understand that, we are better see the truth. And the better we see the truth, the easier it is to focus on it.
You profess to be a Christian. Let me ask you a question. Do you want the Holy Spirit to make your heart His dwelling place? Let us remember what D.L. Moody once said: “I believe firmly that the very moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. We must be emptied before we can be filled.”
As we head into our invitation, let me ask you this: Where are you today?
INVITATION
