LIFE Posts - Focus on the path
We’ve talked about many aspects of walking in the Freedom Christ has bought for us – this week we discuss the importance of maintaining focus on our spiritual walk.
In the natural, staying focused on a narrow physical path is vital because a single momentary distraction can lead to a misstep that can lead to dangerous or even fatal outcomes. If you’re walking on a narrow path on a mountain ridge, getting distracted is easy. Imagine hiking with friends on such a ridge and seeing a gorgeous vista – snow peaked mountains in the summer, with a beautiful forest of trees covering the sides of the mountains, and a magnificent river flowing in the valley. The group keeps going, so you try to keep up with them while also looking at the scenery, reaching into your pocket to grab your cell phone to take a picture. How easy it could be to step off the side of the mountain! We understand that in such a dangerous situation (from your safe vantage point of reading it here) it is unwise to go on “autopilot” because of the real risk of catastrophic injury. Yet how many of us are guilty of sneaking a peek at the phone while driving, glancing past our spouse to the TV in the midst of a deeply important conversation, or impulse buying something that appeals to us while we’re also supposed to be saving money to get in financial order. Distractions take our focus off of what is important.
Hebrews 12:2 (AMP2015) 12:2 [looking away from all that will distract us and] focusing our eyes on Jesus, who is the Author and Perfecter of faith [the first incentive for our belief and the One who brings our faith to maturity], who for the joy [of accomplishing the goal] set before Him endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God [revealing His deity, His authority, and the completion of His work]. [Ps 110:1] [1]
Spiritually, the author of Hebrews tells us to fix or keep our eyes on Jesus. The Amplified 2015 Bible points out that this means we’re to look “away from all that will distract us.” The Greek word translated as “focusing our eyes” in the above is aphorao, which means “to look away from one thing so as to see another”, “to concentrate the gaze upon”[2] or “to keep thinking about, without having one’s attention distracted—‘to think about, to fix one’s attention on.’”[3]
There’s a reason we’re told not to become distracted – as we go through our daily life, we’re constantly bombarded with distractions! Unfortunately, we don’t often recognize the fact that we’re being distracted, because our hard-wired “fight-or-flight” responses so naturally overwhelm the prioritization of our thinking. We’ve talked about spiritual order in a past message; the rubber meets the road for this when we consider how distractions are to be dealt with.
For example, have you ever found yourself so hungry that you cannot focus on a task at hand until you get something to eat? This is such a common thing that Snickers made a series of humorous commercials that showed the transformation of people from one type to another after eating a Snickers bar. While we do need to feed our bodies to sustain life, we should not let them dictate our thinking as well as defining what we feed them. What is distracting you in your day-to-day life currently? Everyone is in a different place and set of circumstances, but some examples that are common are:
- Thoughts that are focused on pleasure, relief, or other forms of having fun. These could range from overtly sensual (going to a party where the booze is flowing freely) to an activity that will remove focus from issues of life, such as a hobby that will temporarily get all your mental focus off of a heavy concern.
- Thoughts that are focused on a heavy concern, such as financial or health stress. Perhaps it is a relational issue, or a work outlook, or even things being discussed in the news. Focusing on these negative things without the faith and hope in God we’ve talked about become major distractions that take our mental and spiritual focus away from God.
- Thoughts that are focused on regrets of the past. These could range from things we’ve done wrong, or wrongs done to us, or just simple misfortune.
Just as our body’s appetites can make us “hangry” until we’ve fed them, our thought life will want us to do the same. When there are distractions that cause our faith, focus, or energy to try to be filled by something other than God and His Will, we can become stuck going down a path that isn’t the one that leads to life.
Our minds are constantly attempting to process myriad inputs, but since we are not God, we cannot process them all. Unconsciously, our minds filter those inputs. You may have encountered this if you’ve begun the process of shopping for a big-ticket item such as a car. Once you’ve begun to narrow down what brand or model of car you’re interested in, suddenly it seems that that type of car is all around you when you drive. You never noticed them before, but now it seems that they’re everywhere! Pick any sort of thing you’ve become interested in, and suddenly you notice that thing in more places than you realized were there. They already were all around you, it is just that you didn’t notice them. This happens to everyone - psychologists refer to this as attention bias, selective perception, or the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (the Frequency Illusion.).
Because we are drawn to such ways of thinking, the Bible tells us to fix our gaze upon Jesus in Hebrews 12:2. This requires our conscious submission to Him, and willful pursuit of Him in our thought life. Because our brains will naturally run with selective perception, building a worldview or outlook based on whatever it is allowed to fixate upon, we need to break the “cycle of staring.” If we’re fixated on temporal things – like world issues, conflicts, wants/desires, hurts, or temptations – we will find ourselves believing that small, temporal things are absolute and the biggest, most powerful thing in our lives. If we fixate on the frailty of this world, the precariousness of health, relationships, or finances – we’ll see decay, risk, and hopeless pointlessness as our worldview. This is what Solomon saw when he wrote much of the book of Ecclesiastes – with “everything is meaningless” being the outlook he had when seeing life itself through a worldly view.
If we instead choose to focus on Jesus – fixing our eyes on Him and His Word – our frame of reference is based on the Spirit and thus the eternal. By focusing our mind on Jesus and on His character, purpose, and promises, we will begin to see purpose, grace, and divine order and even opportunity in the temporal chaos of the world. Note that we need to be persistent in fixing our eyes on Jesus! Our thought patterns have a “momentum” behind them; if we’ve been thinking the wrong things or the wrong ways for long periods of time, it will take effort to submit them to the Holy Spirit on a constant basis. Neil T. Anderson shares the following analogy regarding thinking:
Suppose there is a dirt road leading to your house in the country. If you continually drive over that road the same exact way, ruts will be formed over time. The sun will dry those ruts and make them hard as concrete. The easiest thing is to allow the car to drift along in those ruts. It will be a rough ride compared to the smooth ride that you could have on the surface right beside the ruts. When you only make a halfhearted effort to steer out of them, you will immediately feel the resistance on the wheel to return to the ruts in the road.
If you want to get out of the rut, you will have to be totally committed and willing to make deliberate choices. In the same way, if you no longer want to be controlled by the strongholds or “rut thinking” that the world, the flesh and the devil has cemented in your mind over years, you need to be committed to breaking those strongholds and make deliberate choices based on the truth of God’s Word. You choose; you don’t passively let your old patterns of thinking decide. You take every thought captive in obedience to Christ and choose His truth. This is how we renew our minds—by knowing and choosing the truth, and by letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within us (see Rom. 12:2; Phil. 4:8; Col. 3:16).[4]
To navigate the narrow path that leads to life, the illustration of a rut filled dirt road is a great analogy. To keep clear of the ruts, we need to stay focused on the road, not the scenery around us or changing the radio station. Being distracted will get us quickly in a rut! Looking too far ahead down the road will cause us to miss steering clear of the rut right in front of us, and looking out the rear-view mirror will cause the same. Being worried about and fixated on the future or carrying the weighty baggage of the past will get us into the ruts right in front of us. Allowing the Holy Spirit to be our navigator instead of the flesh’s directions will keep us out of the ruts of life.
Application/Questions/Journal your thoughts
- Many times, our minds are digging ruts and we’re not consciously aware of that fact. Taking inventory of our thoughts is an exercise we need to do and can be done in many ways. One way is to ask questions as follows: What has your attention most during your day? What were the first thoughts you had when your eyes opened this morning? What were you thinking about when you went to bed the night before? Journal the answers to those questions, conversing with the Holy Spirit for revelation. What other questions can you identify to understand your mind's direction?
- The Bible tells us in Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” The context of that verse is how a person can say something to you that seems kind, but the person doesn’t mean it. What he says doesn’t line up with what is going on in his heart and mind. We’re told in Proverbs 4:23 to watch over our hearts with all diligence, because from it flows the springs of life. This can be understood to manage our thought life, but to do that we need more than our own willpower. We need to submit to the Holy Spirit and rely upon Him to enable us to steer our thoughts out of the ruts. We all find ourselves in ruts – ask the Holy Spirit for any way of thinking that has become “normal to you” but is outside of His Way of seeing things. Journal what He reveals to you and ask Him for the strength to break out of that rut.
Scripture of the week
Hebrews 12:2 (NASB 2020) 12:2 looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. [5]
Colossians 3:2 (NASB 2020) 3:2 Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. [6]
Proverbs 4:23 (NASB 2020) 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life. [7]
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NASB 2020) 10:5 We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, [8]
Philippians 4:8 (NASB 2020) 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things. [9]
Weekly prayer
Dear Jesus,
Thank You that I can do all things through You Who strengthens me – including taking inventory of my thought life and steering my mind’s focus on You. Holy Spirit, I give You my life and ask for Your voice to be my navigator, not my flesh’s appetites and desires. Thank You for transforming me more into Your image every day. Amen!
Freedom Facet
Keeping our focus on Jesus is critical for us to continue to walk the narrow path of sanctification. Just as a moment's distraction on a mountain ridge can be catastrophic, distractions in daily life – pleasures and escapes, heavy concerns over finances, health, or relationships, and regrets of the past – pull our attention away from God. Our minds naturally filter what they take in, so whatever we fixate upon becomes the lens through which we see everything; fix on the temporal and the temporal looks absolute, and life begins to feel as meaningless as it did to Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Hebrews 12:2 calls us to look away from all that would distract us and fix our eyes on Jesus, and that requires conscious submission and willful pursuit rather than autopilot. Because our thought patterns carry momentum (the ruts of a dirt road, as Neil T. Anderson pictures it) breaking out of them takes deliberate choices grounded in the truth of God's Word and dependence on the Holy Spirit rather than willpower alone. Take inventory of your thoughts, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the ruts that have become normal to you and ask Him for the strength to steer out of them. Plug into community of the body of believers, so that the testimony and encouragement of others can help you see Jesus’ active work in the world around you.
Jesus's Freedom is for those who call Him Lord - those who believe in Him. If you’ve not yet accepted Christ Jesus as Your Lord, and would like to, say the following prayer aloud.
Lord Jesus, I confess and realize that I am a sinner, and without You, I am lost and separated from God. Thank You for going to the cross and dying for my sins – I ask for Your forgiveness for my sins, and I thank you and receive the forgiveness of my sins Your Word says is now mine! Holy Spirit, I thank You that You now reside within me. I lay down my will for Yours and ask for Your daily guidance and direction to make me more and more like You. Amen!
The Bible tells us that if we confess Jesus as Lord with our mouth and believe in our hearts that God resurrected Jesus from the dead, we are saved for eternity. If you’ve just accepted Jesus as Lord, know that heaven is celebrating right now (Luke 15:10)! Rejoice because you are a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), and now have begun the process of sanctification becoming like Him. Keep coming back, as we explore Freedom facets and what our Identity in Christ truly is. Share this joyous news with a brother or sister in Christ and get connected in your local church! LIFE is yours!
Small Group Invitations - Week of July 26, 2026
Below are invitations to just a couple of Men's Small Groups that are happening this week, both a part of Celebration Church, Georgetown, Texas. If these don't work for you, or if you're not a Celebration Church, TX attendee - regardless of the church you attend - being a part of small group is immensely important! If you're not involved in one, I pray that you find one that works for your schedule and you get plugged in. Being connected in the local church will bless you immeasurably!
Tuesday Morning Men's Fellowship Group: 6am - 7am at Rudy's BBQ in Round Rock, Texas. Join us for a time of fellowship where we'll discuss the message from the Pastors on Sunday, the newsletter contents, or whatever is going on in the lives of the brothers meeting.
Friday Morning Celebration Men: This week we're back at the Celebration Church Annex. Join us at 6:30 am for coffee, breakfast tacos, fellowship and discussion about God's Word. We'll conclude at 8am so people can get to work.
[1] Amplified Bible | 2015 (AMP). 2015. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[2] Vine, W. E., Merrill F. Unger, and William White Jr. 1996. In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 2:377. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson.
[3] Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. 1996. In Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., 1:353. New York: United Bible Societies.
[4] Anderson, Neil T. 2003. Discipleship Counseling. Edited by Benjamin Unseth. Ventura, CA: Regal.
[5] New American Standard Bible. 2020. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[6] New American Standard Bible. 2020. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[7] New American Standard Bible. 2020. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[8] New American Standard Bible. 2020. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
[9] New American Standard Bible. 2020. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.