Where Is Your Focus?

Karl Wallenda was one of the world’s greatest tightrope performers. In 1978 he fell to his death.

Some time later his wife was speaking of the tragedy. “All Karl thought about,” she recalled, “for three straight months prior to his death was falling. It was the first time he had ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all of his energies into not falling rather than in walking the tightrope.”

Paul warned us about focusing on the wrong things. In his letter to the Philippians he advised them to “look forward to what lies ahead. I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us to heaven.”

The future is in front of all of us. And often it is not the future that causes us problems, but the past. We can’t feel sorry about what problems that may happen in the future, we can’t become discouraged about mistakes that might occur in the future and we can’t regret sins we will commit in the future. But we can become overwhelmed with problems and mistakes and sins that occurred in the past.

And when we allow the past to interfere with our future we will take our eyes off the “prize” that God has waiting for us. We must never relax our efforts or lower our standards if we want to be all that we can be through Christ our Savior. If we do, we lose the prize.

Prayer: Help us, Father, to keep our eyes upon You and the prize that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. May we allow no one or no thing to distract us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Scripture for Today: Philippians 3:13-14 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.