A Better Focus

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast. I have made the

Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Well, school has begun.

I didn't hear any boos. All right. Well, what reminded me about school,

since we don't have anyone in our household that currently is going to school,

homeschooled or not homeschooled, or going to a place, what reminded me it was

that time of the year again was the fact that I saw this little kid with a backpack

chock full of stuff walking

slowly down the sidewalk by our house on his way to school in Parma.

And as he walked along, I thought about those days with a heavy backpack,

with all the school supplies that are in there that you have to bring and give

to your teacher, divide up all the Kleenex boxes that are getting smashed in

the backpack, maybe a lunchbox, and who knows what else.

I remember even in high school, those thick textbooks that we had to take and

were responsible for, our parents would have to pay $50. Well,

we would have to pay $50 if we lost them. And I just remember the weight of that.

Oh, you know, I had a backpack Oh, it's right there Honey, would you bring me

that backpack? Thank you.

Do you need some help? Yeah, maybe.

Maybe some of you beautiful children that are strong. You're used to it.

Oh, wow. Some of these football players here. Wow. Thank you,

guys. I appreciate that.

Put your back out. Man. We sat in these massage chairs at the fair yesterday.

They wanted to sell us one. only $150 a month for the rest of our lives I think

I might have needed one let's go back after church here.

What is in this thing? I just need to get my sermon notes out of it.

What do you guys think's in here? Man.

Oh, no wonder it's so heavy. It's the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene that's in here.

That could be a weight on anyone's shoulders if it's not looked at in the right way, I guess.

Ah, what else we got in here? Man. Oh, there's my sermon.

It is quite the heavy sermon today for Family Sunday, but, oh yeah,

I'm already off topic, so we'll just save that.

Oh, okay, here's a couple more.

Haley's Bible Handbook, that comes in handy when you're preparing a Bible study

or sermons. I mean, that's good, but there's something, oh, here it is.

The New Compact Bible Dictionary. Look up those hard words that the Scripture,

talks about that we don't always understand or know.

Very useful if you're in the King James Version of the Bible.

There's other stuff. What is this, some kind of joke?

I was looking for this. It goes on my fire pit at home.

Oh, no wonder. Man, this is really in here. I wish this was gold. Just half a brick.

I'd take half a brick of gold, though.

No wonder the chickens got out. This is one of the stones to hold him in.

Okay, this backpack is not meant for this stuff.

There's a lot of bricks in there, right? What in the world?

Isn't that how life is, though, sometimes? Sometimes we're carrying around stuff

we really don't need, along with stuff that we will use and will need.

I mean, that's how it goes sometimes.

We carry this stuff around with us, but we really don't need it.

Now, who all helped carry this up here?

All right. And it was really heavy, wasn't it? I'm not faking it,

right? Those aren't like pumice stones I could throw up and catch easily.

When we think about life and we're carrying around stuff we weren't meant to

carry around, can you guys that helped carry this, and if you want to look after

church kids how heavy these were, you can come up and see with your parents' permission, of course.

Can you imagine trying to run a race with this backpack as heavy as it was with this stuff in it?

Now, some of you I know, you ran track in high school, maybe even college,

and the idea behind running track is you want to have the lightest weight possible as you go.

And you want to run that race as light as you can with as much strength and

power as you can. And if you were carrying a backpack like this,

that would not have happened.

You know, when we think about life in general, the life that you're living,

the life that you hope to live.

We can't get weighed down by other things that we need and that we really don't

need, that we carry along with us.

And, you know, when we look to the book of Hebrews today, just a few verses,

they're power-packed verses, we can see that we don't need some of these weights on our journey.

As a matter of fact, we've all felt the weight of distractions in life,

the weight of distractions when it comes to wanting to live our best life for

our family, wanting to live our best life for God, wanting to live our best

life in the context of the church.

And we see what Hebrews tells us today is how to shed some of this,

how to let it go, and how to run the race that God has set out before us.

And so this morning, I would invite you to stand if you're willing and able,

and let's just read the first few verses of Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

The scripture says this, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great

cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that

so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame,

and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such

opposition from sinners So that you will not grow weary and lose heart,

Let's pray Father, thank you for your word May it impact our life today May

we hear the words that have been said And Lord, may it be applied to our life

We ask in the powerful name of Jesus today Amen,

Thank you, you can be seated,

Now, if Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 Was written in today's.

Hebrews 12:1

Written in today's context, in today's life that we live, in today's culture,

we might have been tempted to hear the author write it this way.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great many distractions,

because it's true, first and foremost, we are surrounded by many, many distractions.

And I'm not talking about your neighbor next to you this morning.

I'm not talking about those thoughts, although that's probably part of it,

that pop into your mind at random times.

But just in general, in the culture that we lived in, we are surrounded by distractions.

Verse 1 says, Since we have all these witnesses surrounding us,

let us throw off everything that hinders the sin that so easily entangles.

Let's throw it off. Let's get rid of these distractions.

Yeah, that's right. We don't want to carry a backpack with heavy rocks, do we? Not at all.

You know, not every weight is a sin. There is a sin, the scripture says,

which so easily entangles.

There is a season or two or three that I ran cross country in the winter to

keep ready and in shape for the track season in the spring.

And sometimes we would run in the winter outside and it's cold.

And sometimes you would step in a snowbank but you wouldn't know there was a

garden hose that someone didn't put away and so you would get entangled by that

that's not good for a runner especially in winter on slick stuff to hit that,

the hose was good in the summertime when you needed to water the garden or the

grass or you know get a drink from it maybe you're not supposed to do that anymore

i think that was just generation that i was part of,

but not every thing is bad.

I mean, Compact Bible Dictionary, Haley's Bible Handbook, the Manual,

the Church of Nazarene, those are all good in their proper context.

Sometimes they can be pretty heavy, especially this one on top.

So things are good, but sometimes they could be a distraction.

Sometimes things aren't good. Why would you want to run a race carrying a brick,

unless you're going to throw it at your opponent, which you're not supposed to do?

That's an easy disqualification.

Why would you want to run with one of your firing blocks with you as you're

trying to run the relay race?

That doesn't make any sense. That's not a good distraction.

When we think about what distracts us in life, is it something good?

It might be something really good, but just misplaced and not appropriate at the time.

Or it could be something you've picked up that's not really healthy at all, that doesn't help you.

We're surrounded by distractions. Not all of them are evil.

Some are really good, but still nonetheless, the scripture says,

we've got to be careful on how we're running this race that God has given us.

You see, we live in an attention economy in this day and age, in this culture.

I've already heard it this morning, some alerts going off on your phones.

There's one alert that I always pay attention to.

Okay, I didn't do it very well, but that's the ESPN sports alert.

It tells you what the scores are.

I'm glad that you have those silence during the church service,

or I would be distracted wondering who just scored a touchdown,

or who was ahead in the NASCAR race. No, that was last night,

so that's not going to be on today.

You see, we get distracted so easily. Did you know that the average adult person

who has a cell phone, especially a smartphone, receives 60 to 80 alerts every single day?

If you're younger than 25, you receive a lot more than that because you have

more apps and more notifications.

But you know what happens when you receive these alerts? Remember,

we live in an attention economy.

As soon as you receive an alert, you hear that. It does something in your brain.

There's a hit of dopamine that happens. You're like, Ooh, I wonder what that message is.

You know, maybe it's an online coupon you've got. And so you need to go blow

some money on something.

Maybe it's a text from your sweetie and she's just saying she loves you.

Or he's just saying he's thinking about you today.

Maybe it's, Oh, you got this bill coming up, Idaho power that you have to pay.

And so don't forget about it. Anyway, it does something to you.

One, it distracts you by giving you that hit of dopamine, you're excited,

the fight or flight syndrome, and it kicks in because you're excited to see what it is.

And then you're either really happy on what you received or you're really sad,

depending on what the text message is or what the email alert is.

This happens to us and we let it happen 60 to 80 times a day.

Man, you ever get really scared? Like someone jump scared you or you're watching

a movie and all of a sudden the killer jumps out and.

You get this adrenaline pumping through you? Well, that happens on a micro scale

with every alert that we get.

And again, in this attention economy, everyone's wanting your attention.

When this happens, it does this up and down of this adrenaline coursing through

your body of this dopamine hitting your system.

And man, you wonder why you're tired all the time?

I think it has something to do with this. You wonder why you're exhausted at

the end of the day after getting all these alerts?

That's part of the reason. But it's not just that. You see, in this attention

economy, everyone has to be on guard about their opinions.

Everyone has to be in this hurry. Everyone's comparing something or someone to somebody else.

We have this entertainment that always wants our attention.

We have all of these things that are vying, that are competing for our focus.

They want you to focus on them.

And sometimes that is the huge distraction that leads us away from what's important.

And we've talked about this concept before, spiritual drift.

When you begin just to slowly drift away from what is right and what is good and what is holy,

and it's just a slow drift, like you were in that boat, just kind of not tied

to anything, and you're just drifting out to the middle of the lake,

hopefully not near the waterfall. We talked about that sermon before.

But when we start to drift away, it's not a conscious decision that you make

to say, oh, I'm just going to untie this rope and I'm just going to float out into the water.

It usually doesn't begin with that decision. Well, God, I've had it with you.

You didn't answer my prayer, so I'm walking away.

Usually it doesn't happen like that. It happens slowly when we give our attention

to something else or to someone else.

We say, oh, you know, I don't really need to read my Bible today.

I've got a busy day. I'm just going to go hit it and get right to work.

The next day it becomes easier not to get into our personal devotion time and,

not to spend time in prayer.

I mean, we just slowly make these small decisions as our focus is taken away.

Oh, well, this happens on the news. I need to turn the radio on and hear how this plays out.

I mean, it's these slow little decisions we make that help us to drift away

as we take our focus off of God and place it on these other little things.

But there's a danger in this because what has your attention may eventually

shape your direction of your life.

If you're not submitting yourself to God every single day, if you're not having

time with God every day, multiple times a day, I could even say,

but you're giving your focus and attention to other things, those other things

are going to begin to shape your direction in life and where you should be going.

You see, because we're surrounded by distractions.

But the good news is we can have a focus, and following Jesus requires that

kind of purposeful focus that we all need.

The Christian life isn't just a casual stroll, but it's a race,

and that race requires endurance.

I hated cross-country because it was an endurance race, and I was a sprinter in high school.

Man, you run 10, 20, 60 seconds, you're done.

At my pace, I was running 15, 18, 20 minutes in the cross-country because it's more of an endurance.

The scripture says here, run with perseverance. And what that word perseverance

means, it means you stay in the race for the long haul.

Even if the road is long, the course is long that you're running,

even if it's difficult, even if you feel like you're never going to get to the

finish line, you stick with it.

You keep running. You stay at it.

To quote from one of the movies that many of you will know, keep on swimming,

keep on swimming, keep on swimming.

You don't stop. You never give up. You keep going. Endurance doesn't mean just try harder.

We hear that a lot, man. Just try harder.

Give it your best shot. But really, endurance in a race, endurance in life means

that you know where you're headed and you refuse to quit until you get there.

Dads, it's kind of like you have a destination in mind and there are no potty breaks along the way.

You are going to get to that destination in record time And your child's bladder

will not stop you You may have to clean the seat when you arrive But you have a destination in mind.

When we think about enduring, we've got to remember, it's not just about trying harder to do that.

Christians, we try really hard to do a lot of things, and sometimes we end up failing.

But when we remember that endurance, it's about knowing where we're supposed

to be going, going in that direction and refusing to quit it. It's a game changer.

And just another note here, while we're on this subject, when you're running,

you can't compare your race to somebody else's race.

Some people are going to have it easier than you. Some people are going to have

it harder than you as they're living life, as they're running their race, running their course.

So it's hard for you to compare your life to somebody else's,

to compare your race with someone's. Now there's some commonalities in there

where you can give some encouragement, perhaps even some godly advice where

it's warranted, but don't compare how you're progressing in life with somebody else.

Stay in your lane and run the race. Amanda, you're going to help people up if

they're falling next to you, but you know what?

Avoid that comparison trap.

We're only supposed to carry what we're supposed to carry. We share one another's burdens, that's true.

But at the same time, we've got to remember that we're not supposed to carry

things that God has not asked us to.

We're not supposed to take on burdens that aren't ours and try to run the race with them,

try to live life with them, Trying to do everything that we do While we're holding all of these things,

Whether we have a backpack or not It's hard to serve God When we're trying to balance the weight,

Of other people's problems Of our own circumstances We can't truly serve God

We can't reach out and give someone a helping hand If we're holding these things on us,

We've got to be aware that If we're going to follow God It requires this great

focus Man, I'm getting a workout today.

Yeah, I'm not that in shape, as you can tell. I will have a good nap today.

Remember, you don't have to run someone else's race, but what you need to do

is to run your race faithfully.

Race like God wants you to in the direction that he is going.

And here's what Jesus does for us.

Jesus re-centers our attention. When we look back to verse 2,

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

That's who Jesus is. King James is the author and perfecter of our faith.

The one who starts it and the one who will finish it. That's Jesus for us.

He started this work within your life. And Philippians tells us he will not

stop that work until it's completed.

He who began a good work in you will be faithful until it's completed in you.

That's a good word that we have from the scripture.

Jesus re-centers our attention. Did you hear that? Fixing our eyes on Jesus.

That means focusing on Jesus.

When life gets tough, we tend to look at our circumstances, look at those things around us.

And fixing our eyes on Jesus isn't just some kind of passive optimism.

Well, I know things will get better because I'm looking at Jesus.

Well, that's great, but it's not just this passivism where you don't do anything,

But you have an action involved It's a deliberate decision To run from the lesser

voices That are vying for your attention And look toward Christ.

Man, I don't know about you, but when I get on my cell phone and there's all

kinds of great reels on there, some of them are stupid and targeted at me because I'm a 54-year-old guy.

So I get these weird ones. You try to block them and then you end up with more somehow.

But I get these great religious debates, these great evangelistic encouragements.

And that can be a rabbit hole that I go down all day if I'm not careful.

They're vying for my attention.

Are they good? Yeah, they're good. I gained something from each of them.

But are they useful at the time? No, it takes up my whole day if I get caught in that.

Think about all these lesser voices, some of them will be good,

some won't be. But the scripture tells us Jesus is the pioneer of our faith.

We live in a great area in the state of Idaho, in the world, I think.

And we learned about the Oregon Trail in high school, and man,

it just comes right through our area right here.

The pioneers that first came through, the Native Americans that came through and hunted and lived.

I mean, we live in a historic place.

Can you imagine being the pioneer? Pioneers are the ones that cut the trail.

They're the ones that went there first and were able to blaze the trail to something better.

Scripture says Jesus is our pioneer.

He blazed the trail for all human beings everywhere.

He's the author of our faith. He's the one that says, this is the way to go. Follow me.

You will not die of dysentery if you follow Jesus. I could tell you that.

You may not get bit by a rattlesnake, may not.

But I've got to tell you, as Jesus is our pioneer, he's already went through

everything that we will go through. Every temptation, every kind of temptation

that you face, Jesus faced.

Every kind of obstacle, every kind of social things that come your way, Jesus faced for us.

And he showed us the way that we are to live as we read through the scriptures.

Jesus recenters our attention because he's the pioneer. He's the offerer.

He went before us. He opened the way for us to have this relationship with God.

But he's also the perfecter, the completer, the finisher of our faith.

Doesn't merely call us to finish. Okay, I started it. You guys finish it.

No, Jesus comes along, and he's faithful at work in us as we run.

He's not just at the finish line saying, all right, come on,

just three more miles. Let's go, go, go, go.

He's not just there screaming out praise to us to keep going and encouragement.

No, he's running alongside. Come on, Mike, you can do it. Come on, let's go.

Watch out, there's a hole there. Come on, just a little farther.

Jesus is perfecting us. He's going along with us. He's coaching us on the way

as we go to say, you can do this.

Hey, if you fall down, you get back up, and God helps you to do that.

Jesus is going to perfect you. He's going to complete you. He's going to help you finish.

You're not in this on your own, even though you feel like it sometimes. You're not.

Jesus is right there with you, not just cheering you on, but running with you.

He has already run the road. He's already carried the cross.

He's already defeated sin, and now he runs with us.

So as a result of that, we know that a Jesus-focused life becomes a lighter life.

When you're focused on Christ, some things just normally fall away because they're

not important to you anymore.

Jesus endured the cross, the scripture says here, verse 2 and 3,

for the joy set before him, in

verse 2, he looked beyond the suffering and looked to the purposes of God.

Focusing on Jesus doesn't mean every hardship that you have disappears,

but I can tell you it changes how you will carry hardship in your life.

It changes you.

And even though you still may carry a burden of some sort Jesus is there and

he says in another passage in scripture To cast his yoke upon you Because that

burden is easy, it's light.

Think about becoming lighter in our life, when we have Christ central to our

life, lesser burdens lose their power to define us.

They lose their power to shape us and say, you should be like this when God

wants you to be a different way.

Scripture says, his joy becomes our strength, his endurance becomes our hope,

and his faithfulness keeps us going when we want to give up.

Guys, I want you to be encouraged by this. A better focus, a focus on Jesus, fixing our eyes on him.

It may not change our circumstances immediately, but I can tell you it will

change what the circumstances are able to do to you in that time frame.

With Jesus as our model of endurance, what is one area of your life today that

can benefit from a change in focus?

And how will you shift that focus from whatever is burdening you today onto Jesus?

How could you look to Jesus? Like I said earlier, maybe many of you are exhausted.

You get the alerts all day long and you check every single one and it just leads

you to this place. By the end of the night, you just collapse on your bed.

Your brain is moving so fast you want to sleep, but you can't.

You might not be exhausted just because life is hard, but maybe because you're

focusing on the wrong things in life.

You're carrying weights that God never wanted you to carry.

Maybe your eyes have been fixed to fear, fear that your circumstances have brought

up in your life, frustration because you can't accomplish something that you

wanted to, and now you're at a stage of life where it's just not going to happen,

barring a miracle that God wants to bring in.

Maybe you've spent your life focusing on comparing yourself and your family

to others, and you don't meet up to the race that they're running because your

race course is different in life.

Or maybe there's a latest urgent demand that's hit your life and it's just so

overwhelming it overshadows everything else.

Can you focus on Jesus even in those circumstances? Again, today the invitation

is not merely just try harder, try harder.

No, the invitation is look to Jesus.

Fix your eyes upon Jesus. See how Jesus wants you to run, how Jesus wants you to live at this time.

You've got to lay aside whatever is bogging you down.

Lay aside those things that you don't really need.

Run the race that is in front of you and trust that the one who started this

work in you is going to see it through, even if it's difficult right now.

What I'd like you to do this week is this. Spend 10 minutes.

It's a small investment in your week. Find a time this week.

Spend 10 minutes. Identify one distraction in your life. Spouses don't count.

Your children don't count.

Okay you'll get in trouble if you try to limit or eliminate those distractions,

and just be aware that you maybe are the distraction as well,

but spend 10 minutes identify one distraction in your life and write down a

specific plan to limit it or maybe even eliminate it from your life,

maybe it's just as simple as what i said a minute ago maybe just silence some

of the alerts that you receive.

Maybe just silence them. If you don't need the app, delete it.

If it's an email, maybe you could wait till later to see what those are.

That's just one thing. Maybe it's a time in your day where you really want to

spend time with God's Word, but everything keeps getting in the way.

Maybe say, well, how can I limit the distractions at that time when I'm trying,

trying to read the Bible.

Here's a pro tip. This is free.

Definitely worth the cost of admission today. I love having my Bible on my phone

and my tablet, but that's a distraction for me.

If you find yourself trying to have devotions on your phone or your tablet or

even your computer, you've got the Bible app, which is awesome,

but you get distracted because as soon as you start reading the scripture,

boom, an email pops up where, oh, you got a text alert.

Get yourself one of these. This is an old school Bible, right?

Let's get one of these for your daily devotion or your daily worship time.

It'll cut through that distraction quickly with enough time for you and God

just to spend some time in prayer and in the word.

That's just a little pro tip. And I say that from personal experience.

Because it's easy to get distracted.

10 minutes, guys, this week, identify one distraction, make a plan to limit

it or eliminate it. Why does this matter?

Well, it's important because if you identify and you limit that distraction,

or if you don't, I should say, then your relationships begin to suffer.

Definitely your relationship with God, but also your relationship with other people.

Because at times you might be so distracted, you're mentally absent from the

person that's right in front of you talking to you.

You're there, but you're not there. Has that ever happened to you?

You're talking to someone and, excuse me, did you hear what I said?

What, what? Did you say something?

I mean, sometimes we get that way. And sometimes it could be our loved ones

and it leaves them feeling ignored.

It leaves them feeling unimportant to you because something else had your mind.

This week, just take 10 minutes. Take those 10 minutes and say,

God, would you help me come up with a plan to limit this or get rid of it?

Because I want you know when you

fix your eyes on Jesus, you will find the strength to finish your race.

This morning, as we have gathered together on Family Sunday,

we're going to take of the Lord's Supper together.

This is a way that we fix our eyes on Jesus.

I wanted to do it today, families, because usually the kids are in children's

church and they don't get to participate in this.

And so this is up to you, families, how you want your children to participate.

This is important as we focus our lives on Christ, as we receive the body and the blood of Jesus.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.