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Life has a way of distorting our focus. Like a blurred picture from an out of focus camera, the loss of focus causes us to lose our sense of direction and purpose, even our sense of reality. Why is this so? Blurred objects lose their distinctiveness and everything runs together producing a loss of depth.

This is what happens when we face difficulty. The difficulty has a way of becoming larger than life (out of focus) and everything is distorted. Our difficulty takes on the aura of being impossible and God becomes inadequate in view of the impossible difficulty we face. Our response is to cry out like the Psalmist, "Why do you stand afar off, O LORD? Why do you hide in times of trouble?" (Psalms 10:1 NKJV) At first, we see God is in the distance and then He disappears out of sight.

However, the Bible teaches us that as we enter into loving intimacy and fellowship with God, focusing our attention on Him, He brings about changes in us and in our circumstances to draw us closer to Him. It is a cooperative effort between us and God, our part being the yielding, trusting and resting in HIS ability to bring things to pass in HIS time and in HIS way.

It's a lot like swimming as opposed to floating. We can work hard and long to get places by swimming, (self-effort), or we can get in the river, (focusing on God, looking unto Jesus), and let the power of the river take us where we want to go. The difference is the focus.

As we focus on God's willingness, ability and power to bring His own promises to pass in our lives we stay calm and full of energy and enthusiasm. But when we focus our attention on ourselves, then we feel that we are under pressure and obligation to bring God's promises to pass in our lives and that is where the big frustrations begin. We begin to try to "make it happen" instead of "letting GOD make it happen".

Being changed by The Lord, from the inside, brings a permanent solution, whereas changes we try to bring about through self-effort are on the surface and fail to get to the root of the problem. We tend to want to deal with the fruit, (what we can see), but God deals with the root, (attitudes, beliefs, motives). When the root is dealt with, the fruit is dealt with as a result. Only God knows how to change a person from the inside because He is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Begin now to invest more personal time with God, developing fellowship and intimacy with Him. Keep your focus on Him. By doing this you will be changed almost effortlessly, without frustration and turmoil.

Prayer is critical to restoring a proper focus. Not just any kind of prayer but real prayer. Real prayer focuses on God, not others or our difficulty. As a result, our focus is restored. Our difficulty now is seen as something that we can triumph over. Why? Prayer is the vision of the nearness of God and the conscious awareness of the presence of God. Eugenia Price once wrote, "There is no one anywhere as available to everyone everywhere as is God." Prayer allows us to focus on God's omnipotence, omniscience, love and wisdom. This puts our difficulty in focus and removes the fear it has produced in our hearts now that we are focusing our resources instead of our difficulty.

With our restored focus, we can now say with Paul, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13, NKJV) We can join Job and James and proclaim that our difficulty has a purpose. Like Peter I can view my difficult as being temporary.

Keep your focus from being distorted. Learn to pray with out ceasing. Remember that The Holy Spirit wrote through the prophet Isaiah in 26:3; You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, whose thoughts are fixed on you! (NLT)

"The Way" from Kevin Pauley

A World of One