Center Your Energy, Your Focus, And Achieve Your Dreams
Posted: Saturday, June 18, 2011
by Carol Allen Anfinsen
AnfinsenArt
As a child, I was fascinated when my science teacher placed a magnifying glass over a scrap of paper and started a fire simply by focusing the sun’s rays through the glass and magnifying the heat.
This same principle of “focus and magnification” produces intense heat in summer resulting in forest and brush fires. The focused intensity of a lightening rod generates the same kind of energy causing serious damage when combustion ignites and spreads.
Focus on God and you have a divine energy source; a light force that can change human hearts in a positive way and determine the outcome of families, nations and countries.
How do people lose their focus? How do they fail to reach a goal, to achieve their dreams and miss out on the blessings that God has planned for them? How do they lose their way?
A retired Pastor put it this way: “People get off on bunny trails. They get so far from their eternal center (God) that they lose their way.”
In other words, they go off on a tangent. The word “tangent” is a mathematical, geometrical term that simply means a diversion or path away from the center; a trail that veers off into nowhere; an exodus, a departure, a disappearance or a removal. We get so focused on things other than God that we remove ourselves from him and his influence. Sometimes we do this intentionally through bitterness or unbelief, and sometimes through ignorance or neglect.
A tangent may be a good thing if we’re seeking solutions to a difficult problem and we need a different approach to clear our heads. A temporary tangent can be the source of good ideas, or a supplement to creative thought. The important thing is to stay close enough to the center, to the core values that anchor us and stabilize us so that we don’t lose our way entirely.
Some people go so far off on a tangent that they soon embrace different ideologies and principles far removed from their original “God centered” focus. We are all born with the indwelling spirit of Jesus Christ. If we stray too far from that center, we find ourselves “barking up the wrong tree.” The forbidden, the warm and fuzzy new-age philosophies begin to sound good to us. The popular theories and ideologies that we embrace soon become our focus and we succumb to “group think.”
We get caught up in the “isms” of life: sensationalism, rationalism, socialism, humanism, capitalism, environmentalism, etc. There are well over 235 “isms,” possibly more. To see them all with their meanings go to: http://phrontistery.info/isms.html
Add to this list: Marxism, Communism, Nazism and you have more conflict and confusion. These “isms” become our idols. We lump them together with intellectualism, humanitarianism, and modernism, and we think we’ve arrived. We think we’re experiencing self-actualization when, in fact, we’re drifting further and further away from God on a sea of metaphysical illusion propelled by man-made gobbledygook.
Others remove themselves from God by following false Gods or worldly pleasures. They leave behind the things they were taught as children and depart from the living God, thinking they have all the answers.
Other people may never have known God. They may have ignored the “still small voice” so often (promptings of the Holy Ghost) that they no longer hear it. They may never have formed a relationship with Jesus Christ. They are unaware that the entire Bible shouts his name and testifies of his divinity.
These “isms” that grab our attention are used by Satan to distract and destroy us. Jesus was also tempted by Satan. After fasting forty days and forty nights, his human body was ravenously hungry. Satan mocked him saying: “If you are the Christ, the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.”
And Jesus answered: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matt 4:1-4) In this passage, Jesus declares that the word of God is as vital to our health and strength as food; the word being the scriptures contained in the Holy Bible. Yet how many of us even open the Bible except on special occasions? How many of us ignore the messages contained there, choosing to read self-help books instead?
How can we stay close to the center, close to God, if we fail to read his living word? How can we know him if we don’t study the scriptures – the Word of God? Why do we trust professionals, movements, causes, self-help books more than God?
The Apostle John wrote: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” (John 5:39 KJV) In other words: the scriptures, the Holy Bible, testify of Jesus Christ. If you want to know him: read the scriptures, study the scriptures. Add honest seeking and prayer, and you have a powerful combination.
One of my favorite books in the New Testament is the Book of Acts. Following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Acts follows the travels of Paul and the other apostles as they preach the risen Christ and his gospel.
Of course there were rabble-rousers that followed them from city to city, and busybodies who spent their time “in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” Paul stood in the midst of them on Mars’ hill, and said: “You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious…For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you…” (Acts 17:21-23 KJV)
Paul goes on to tell the people that God does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, since he alone gives life to all, and breath, and things. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being, for we are also his offspring.”
The Lord God gave us life and breath. He created us in his image, not in the image of some subterranean slime, amphibious organism, monkey or ape. Our eternal life depends on that knowledge and on our relationship with him. Shouldn’t we spend as much time gaining spiritual knowledge as we do in obtaining secular knowledge and wealth that disintegrates and crumbles once this life is over?
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