Where’s Your Focus?

Focus.

How often do you focus on what you’re focused on? What we focus on can have wide-reaching implications to our lives from relationships, finances, and careers. What you choose to focus on directs the trajectory of your life. The decisions you make, the things you consume, and what you participate in are all influenced by your focus.

Regardless of what you may say, when you are focused on a particular goal, you choose things that will get you closer to that goal. If your focus is on becoming debt free, you probably will not make decisions that will put you into debt. If you want to have a closer relationship with your family, you make decisions that will allow you to spend more time with your family. Your decisions are directly influenced by your focus and you can often tell what someone else is focused on based on their decisions.  

Churches and ministries, for the most part, follow the same principle. You can tell what a church’s focus is by their decisions. In the American church, most churches say that they are focused on outreach or reaching others, but what do their decisions show? If the data from a study by the Barna group is any indication, American Christians are less and less focused on reaching people outside of their congregations. This is just one example of the mismatches between what we say we are focused on and what we are doing. It may be cliché, but a lot of times we talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.

Paul wrote the Philippians, in Philippians 3-4, about his focus and what they should focus on. He was an individual that was focused on honoring God through the Law, but after his encounter with Christ his focus shifted and he began striving towards his new focus. He invites them to join, but warns that there are individuals who will try to distract them. He then reminds them to stand firm, he rebukes two individuals and calls them unify by rejoicing in God and focus on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise—dwell on these things.” He then tells the Philippians act on the example he set for them.

The application, in my opinion, is pretty clear. Just as Paul, every follower of Christ was focused on something else other than Christ. At some point we met Him and our focus should have changed with every decision after should align with that new focus. We should be unifying under the same focus on the Lord Almighty and all He has done for us. That focus should be pushing us to follow the example set by the apostles and all the faithful men and women that have come after them. If our focus is truly on Christ and the Great Commission, our decisions should be moving us closer to that call.

 The bottom line comes down to this, we can talk the talk as much as we want but it means nothing if our actions aren’t reflective of that. Our decisions and actions show what our focus is on and in a lot of churches, it on something other than what they say. We need to be mindful of our focus and, as Paul instructs, focus on the right things.