Focused on the Wrong Thing
Focused on the Wrong Thing
“for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.”
Romans 14:17-19
Life is full of decisions, both good and bad. Sometimes these decisions are made after careful consideration and thought and sometimes they are made in pure haste.
I’ve made plenty of the latter decisions.
Sometimes we get so focused on something we believe that what we are doing is right, true and correct. Only to later find out it was a huge mistake.
It is so hard to stop what you’re doing, cease your personal thoughts about something and to go to God about a decision. Especially when you’ve lived a lifetime of serving yourself and only seeking your own advice or poor advice from others.
And once we’ve identified that we’ve made a bad choice or decision, it’s hard to take responsibility. It looks horrible when you admit you were wrong. We can easily alienate someone else, ourselves or even mar someone’s integrity.
So why do we find it so easy to point out someone else’s mistakes and poor judgement? Is it because we don’t want to stand in the shame pool by ourselves?
And not only is it easy for us to judge someone’s else’s mistakes, we make poor decisions more easily with a partner. We ask someone else to jump in and help us with the bad decision so we don’t make it on our own.
I’ve done this in purchasing a vehicle, bad relationships and even my poor choice in friendships. There are times when I didn’t even need an accomplice to make bad choices. I made plenty of them on my own. And when those things went wrong, I quickly pointed the finger at someone else, like my five year old self when someone asked “who did it?”
It was because I didn’t have focus. Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle. I lose focus now and focus on the wrong thing. I can easily get distracted if I’m not careful and sometimes I can even be a distraction for someone else.
The difference now, is that I know what the focus should be. As believers in Jesus Christ our focus is on God.
It’s tough. Living in the world, living in this fleshy body and having the devil working against you - can make it almost impossible. This is why it is so important to keep focused on God.
We have to be careful not to focus on the wrong things. We are called to do better, to be better and to serve better.
In Chapter 14 of Romans, Paul talks about the strength of the believer and what they should focus on. It is such an important chapter of this book. I encourage everyone to read it, several times.
We aren’t called to be weak, or to distract our fellow believers. And we aren’t called to arrogant or to get distracted. We are to keep our eyes fixed on God.
If what you are doing, or deciding or thinking about doesn’t bring glory to the kingdom of God or His righteousness, you are focused on the wrong thing. Stay in focus by being in God’s word, praying, gathering with two or more in His name and surrounding yourself with like-minded Christians. We all struggle and we will continue to struggle, but the difference is, we have help. Go to God and you won’t go wrong.
“But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, And every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”
Romans 14:10-12
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”
Romans 14:21-22