06.10.14

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. - Isaiah 26:3 NKJV. 

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. - Hebrews 12:1-3 NKJV. 

You shall have no other gods before Me. - Exodus 20:3 NKJV. 

In the world today, we see many different things that people focus on with their lives. I want to share with you just a few.  

David Avner is focused on making himself look like a tiger and he has spent more than $200,000 on plastic surgeries in an attempt to do that. And, there is a man in South America having plastic surgeries to make himself look like a Korean. And, a South Korean woman has had plastic surgeries to make her look like Miranda Kerr. And, I’ve read about a woman having plastic surgeries to make herself look like a Barbie doll. And, Rodrigo Alves has had 20 plastic surgeries to make himself look like a Ken doll. I don’t have $200,000 so I guess I will just have to keep on looking like me. 

Ruan Tang is focused on helping her community in eastern China by killing flies. For the last 14 years she has been killing flies eight hours every day. Someone please buy them some of those bug zappers. 

Three men from Dublin, Ireland have quit their jobs and are doing Irish dances across the world and want more people to join in. I might join in since I have some Irish ancestors, but none of them passed down the dances.  

John Brooker spent 13 years turning a 150-foot long hedge into a 20-foot tall dragon because he thought his hedge was boring. Now, he does have a really cool looking dragon hedge. 

We have to be careful or what we really enjoy doing can become an idol. What is an idol? An idol is anything that we put before God. For example, when I was younger my guitar was the focus of my life. It had become an idol, although it took some time after I became a Christian to recognize the danger it represented. Nothing wrong with playing the guitar, but it had become my focus in life instead of God. We may really enjoy fishing, hunting, water sports, winter sports, and other sports; but if those pursuits are placed before God, they are idols. We love our families, but if we place them or a family member before God they can even become idols. 

The danger of placing our focus upon anything other than God is that it will rob us of peace, rob us of joy, and rob us of blessings. We may, as Hebrews 12:3 indicates, become “weary and discouraged in our souls” when our life focus is not upon our God. Our motto, our plan, our purpose, our focus should be as we are told in Matthew 6:33, “…seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” As we are told in Hebrews 12, we must lay all of that other stuff aside and look to Jesus, focus on Jesus, because He is “the author and finisher of our faith.”