Focus

Beloved,

When you get up in the morning, what kind of issues and concerns are typically on your mind, heart and spirit. I know that some, when with the church family, will say things like they are focused on God when they get up. It sounds good; but, as you know, I like to keep it real.

Keeping it real, some of us wake up worried about our health and the health of those who we love. God is not the focus.

Keeping it real, some of us wake up worried about our wealth and the wealth of those who we love. God is not the focus.

Keeping it real, some of us wake up worried about our relationships and the relationships of those we love. God is not the focus.

Keeping it real, some of us wake up focused on our real and not on the one who can change our real if we will change our focus.

We need to change our focus.

Now, beloved, none of these things that worry us are trivial, immaterial, or unimportant. They are real and they matter; BUT, does our worrying change anything? Does our worrying make things better? Does our worrying put us in a position of feeling stronger, empowered, or in control?

In reality, many of these things, these issues, these concerns, these situations, these circumstances force us to realize we are not in control of the outcomes, we have little or no power to effect change, and we often feel overwhelmed and weak.

Beloved, God does not want us to feel this way; but, we have got to change our focus.

It is hard to wake up in our real and not focus on our real; but, God has asked us to do something else.

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus tells us, "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

Beloved, when you spend all of your time focused on your real, what you see, and what you are dealing with, you lose focus on the one who created reality, who sees all you see, who knows all you are dealing with and, most importantly, has the power to change things...starting with you.

If all you do is focus on you and yours, then you lose focus on the fact that there is more here than what you can ever see with your natural eyes.

You see, when you became a child of God, you became a citizen of another place, a place where all of the problems related to your health, your wealth, and your relationships cease to be material, a place called Heaven, the kingdom of God where His righteousness reigns supreme.

You are not there yet but your focus should be there. To some degree, your problems, issues, worries, concerns and challenges are still here but you should realize that they are temporary, not eternal, and therefore are not but so important.

When you are start intentionally living out who you are, you can see beyond what you naturally see and begin to see more of the world to come and the creator of the world to come.

You begin to believe that you are not stuck right here. In truth, you are going somewhere, somewhere else, to the kingdom of God, to Heaven.

And, as a child of God, you, God's daughters and sons, are supposed to reflect more of the nature of your supernatural Father, not the nature of the natural world.

And, in reality, what you will find is that your circumstances are simply a backdrop for how you will respond based on what you are focused upon.

Trials and tribulations are always going to be with us. How you respond to them reveals your true focus.

In that way, each issue, concern, situation, circumstance, worry, point of anxiety and doubt is really a test, a test of your faith, a test of your trust, to see if you are going to focus on God or yourself, someone else or something else, creator or creation.

And, if you will focus on God, whether your situation changes or not, God will give you what you need to endure with a measure of God that far surpasses anything that you could ever do on your own.

If you focus on God, you will have peace in the most hellish of situations.

If you focus on God, you will have joy in the most darkest of times.

If you focus on God, you will have love when all around you only seem to offer hate.

Beloved, the choice is yours. You can focus on all that is happening in God's created world. Or, you can focus on God the creator, our Savior, our Lord, the Lover of our souls.

Your focus makes all of the difference. God asks us to put God first and God will take care of the rest. Maybe we should trust what God says and do what God says.

We will be focused on God at Noonday Prayer.

We will be focused on God with our sermonic message on The Light radio/internet broadcast at 3pm.

We will be focused on God at HOPE Wednesday at 6:30pm.

We will be focused on God at Sunday worship at 11am.

We will be focused on God because God loves you and, added to God's love, I love you too!

Be blessed,

Rev. Cain