Keeping your Focus

You might not know this but I love to hunt. I don’t really care what it is I’m hunting for I just want to be out spending time outdoors and hunting for game. The problem is a lot of times no matter what planning and preparing I have done in order to be successful hunting I sometimes lose my focus and miss my target.

Not too long ago I decided to go deer hunting early in the morning. I arrived at my prepared location and with layers of clothes bundled up for warmth I waited for the sun to rise in hopes of seeing a nice buck. As I waited patiently in the dark my body was telling me how tired I was and I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke it was about an hour past sunrise and I was extremely aggravated with myself for falling asleep. I open my eyes wide and began searching the area for any deer that might have slipped in while I was getting some shut eye. There were no deer but there was a red fox about 50 yards from where I was sitting. I began to watch the fox as he was hunting some prey himself. It was extremely interesting to watch him. He was a skilled hunter and after sometime he was able to catch his prey and ran off with it. I once again notice that I had been focused so much on the fox that I had missed any opportunity of seeing a deer. Packing up that morning I knew that the main reason I was unable to be successful was I didn’t keep my focus on the target. At that point it didn’t matter that I had spent weeks finding the perfect spot to hunt, that I had spent hours on setting up a camouflage ground blind so that I wouldn’t be seen, that I had made sure to sight my gun in, and do all the other preparation. It was all lost due to me not staying focused on the task at hand.

Deuteronomy 4:29 "But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Why is it so easy to lose our focus? I remember a story in the bible where Peter was able to walk on water by faith, until he took his eyes off Jesus, looking at the storm around him instead. Not staying focused can cause us to take our eyes off the Lord. Maybe we lose our focus due to friends with the wrong intentions, rude people, unfair situations, or just life’s problems. People will either on purpose or innocently cause to stray from doing what God has called you to do. Remember that our lives here on this earth have a purpose to serve God and no one else. Our lives are not aimless, but they are to have a purpose and direction, and we are to stay focused on the purpose, running straight at that goal. Keep focused on the purpose for which God has created you.

We all want to be able to say like Paul, “I am running straight to the goal with purpose in every Step.” 1 Corinthians 9:26

In Him,
Joe

You are a Tool, What is your Job?

Many Christian people today are not living the successful lives that God intended for them because they have missed the purpose for their life.

Eph 2:10
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

If you are going to live successfully, you have to know what it is you are all about. What’s your job? What functionality do you have? You need to know the answers to those questions so that you as a tool are not used for something other than what you were created for. We all know that tools that are used for things that they were not created for run the risk of getting damaged.

The other day I was asked to hang a framed family photo on our living room wall by my wife. I of course oblige and went searching for a nail to use. Once I found the right size nail for this over sized picture frame I then started looking for a hammer. I looked for about five minutes and due to my laziness I decided that a medium size wrench would do the job for me (don’t get too self-righteous, you’ve done it too!). Sometimes being lazy causes us to use whatever is handy and not always what is right in order to get the job done.

With the wrench I knew I could get the nail in the wall, but I was not completely for sure how effective I was going to be with it. There’s a chance I could dent the wall, bend the nail, or scratch up the wrench.

Too many times Christians today are not functioning or flowing in the thing they were created for, and consequently, they are not effective. And sometime they two get hurt and damaged.

You do have a purpose. The bible tells us all that in Eph 2. This week pray that God shows you that purpose, and then develop the gifts God have given you to fulfill that purpose.

Are You Just Swinging the Handle?

As you look at your life today in honesty and transparency, you might say to yourself I have lost that edge I once had, that excitement, that fire, that spiritual passion I once had about Church and working for God.

If indeed you have lost your edge, how can you get it back?

2 Kings 6:4-5
4 And he went with them.
They went to the Jordan and began to cut down trees. 5 As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron ax head fell into the water. "Oh, my lord," he cried out, "it was borrowed!"

This very thing happened to me one time. Well it wasn’t a borrowed ax but I lost the ax head.

Growing up we had a wood burning stove in our house for heat. I personally had a love/hate relationship with the stove. I loved the fact that it produced a great amount of heat on the cold winter days, but I hated when it was time to go and split wood. It always seemed that we would run out of wood at the most inopportune times. I would bundle up and go outside to find the ax and chop out a few pieces to bring back in. One time in particular I will never forget. I was aggravated because it was my turn again to go and chop wood in the cold and it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. I came down hard with the ax and halfway through my swing the ax head came off and went shoring through the air leaving a nice size whole in the side of the barn. I had never seen anything like that happen before. I was at a complete loss for words and stood staring at the whole.

Later on I learned that the only possible reason the ax head could have come off the handle was because it had not been taken care of properly. This must have been the case for the guy in 2 Kings 6 who lost the ax head. It’s a responsibility thing really. If you are going to own a tool such as an ax then you are responsible for keep the ax sharp and the head on the handle.

At this point it would have made no sense at all for this man to keep on chopping on trees with just a wooded handle would it? He would have made no progress at all.

A lot of time Christians can do the same thing today. You lose your cutting edge, and you are just going through the motions, making no progress at all.

You are chopping away with just a wooden handle!

The thought processes goes something like this. Well, I know I’m supposed to go to church, so I will go. As long as I stay looking busy and not in anyone’s way then nobody’s going to know the state my heart is in. The sad part is this can go on for days, weeks, or months, but some people have been doing this for years.

No progress, No Growth. They are just swinging the handle without an ax head.

If this is you, do not just keep swinging the ax handle. If you are not making progress, admit it. Until you are willing to face up to the fact that you have not been growing, you can never regain your spiritual edge.

In Him,
Joe

There’s an App for That!

All iphone, itouch, and ipad users have a common saying and that is “there’s an app for that”. There are a total of 52,060 active software applications that are written for these devices. With that astonishing number you would think there is an application for anything you might need. There is a app that will help you find the closes restaurant to your current location, one that allows you to take a picture of a plant and then tells you what kind of plant it is and how to take care of it, there several gaming apps that allow you to play with your friends and family from any location, there are voice recorder apps and text to speech apps, there are apps that allow you to read your bible, listen to Christian music, and read Christian literature online. Most of these apps were written in order to help take care of a problem or challenge that someone faces. Maybe one day there will be an app to help us make all the decision we have in our life. Or has that app already been developed?
II Timothy 3:15-17 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
It seems that the bible app is just what we need in order to help us make decision for everything in our life. We know that all scriptures were created by God as a guide for us. All too often the problem we have is not having the right source of knowledge, but User Error by not looking first at his words of wisdom before jumping feet first into our decisions we make.
Although the most expensive application you can buy from the iTunes store is $999.99 (BarMax: California study guide to the bar exam). The free app of the bible will always help you the most. Check in on God’s word this week either by using your electronic device or grabbing your leather bound pages and see just what application you can get from it for your life
In Him, Joe

Kindness is a Action

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people. --Abraham Joshua Heschel

There are numerous examples of the kindness of Christ. He was kind to the lepers by healing them of their disease; he was kind to those who did not like him by praying for them, he was kind to those who were unthankful by reminding us that even God is kind to the unthankful and evil, he was kind to the poor by meeting their needs.  

You can have all the knowledge in the world and never save a soul if you don’t first show a person kindness. Showing kindness is one of the best ways that we can minister to people. The most fun I have had with people in ministry has been when we have worked together to help other people. I remember as a teenager working with our church on Saturdays to paint a elderly families home, working in a widow’s yards, watching children for a family who needed a break, and taking grocery’s to those in need. We did this as a church and those times I remember being as productive as we were reaching out in our community. We strengthen our relationship as a church as we worked together young and old and we were saving the lost by first showing them kindness. You should have seen the faces of those we offered to help. They were shocked and amazed and then the questions came:

Why would you take your Saturday and come and work for me?

Who is paying for all of this?

What makes a person want to be so kind?

Those are all leading question that create open doors to share the word of God with people, and that is what we are all looking for.

 
This week I pray that you will be given an open door to share your salvation. I challenge you to show anyone and everyone kindness just as the examples we have of Jesus.


In Him,
Joe

Tenderness

Isaiah 40:11
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.

There are no greater pasture’s than God’s own backyard…

From the Heart
God looks at us as one of his precious lambs. He knows all there is to know about our nature and who we are. Like a sheep that easily wanders astray, when you cry it brings him to your side in a moment. When you are hurting, he does not push you further away, but you feel his soothing love and tender touch, healing all your wounds. When you cannot walk by yourself he will carry you gently until you have safely reached green pastures again. Be grateful that you have a compassionate father. Without him our lives would be so much harder.

There is always a lot of opportunity’s for you to wander astray from the path that God has ask you to be on. Be aware of what it is that is a temptation for you and protect yourself from it. Use your Christian friends, family, and prayer to stay focused. Always remember that if you do stumble and sin that God will always be there to forgive you and love you. So many times we allow the guilt of our sins and our own pride to keep us away from the truth.

SIMPLICITY

Mathew 8:18-20

The Cost of Following Jesus
18When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."
20Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

FROM THE HEART
So many times are wants far exceeds our needs. Things of this world will never be able to fill the gap that is in our soul. There is only one person who can fill those depths and that is God. We are all craving for a simple life with God.
How many times have you stopped and looked at your life and wanted it to just be simple. We organizing our lives, adjust our schedule, and purchase items to make our lives as simple as possible, but at the same time we create all kinds of turmoil in our lives by sliding things in the place of God. We just don’t understand how to have a simple life. A life like Jesus lived.
How do we just enjoy the things that God has blessed us with, but still know that there is only one thing we all need and that is God. We must treasure our relationship with him and understand the importance of it. We have to let it influence every other relationship with have here on this earth, and every decision or commitment that we make. True simplicity is allowing God to have full control of your life.

Let’s look at Jesus….
He had no home to call his own, no place to lay his head, no savings account, and no closet full of clothes. If the son of God could live such a simple life, then why can’t we? He has shown us that the simple things are the best.
Simplicity is not a fad-i-tude, but an attitude of heart.