Stay Focused and keep pressing forward!

Have you ever been distracted while driving? Something on the side of the road may have caught your attention. Or maybe something inside of the car caught your attention. For a split second you took your eye off of the road and oops you either landed into the other lane or hit the curb. One morning when I was driving Jeremiah to school I took my eyes off of the road for a second and in that second I was pretty close to the ditch. I was too close for my comfort to be exact. There was another time years ago when I reached back to get Jasmine's pacifer and landed in a deep ditch. Again it just took a second to take my eyes off of the road and I landed in a big ditch. If you have ever been in a ditch you know this is not a good place to be. I was in a ditch in the country in a big SUV. I was in trouble and I had to wait on help to get me out. Oh but if I would have just kept my eye on the road.

The same is true for our spiritual walk it does not take much to distract us and get our eyes off of Jesus. Oh but when we take our eyes off of Jesus we can land ourself in a spiritual ditch. A spiritual ditch is not a very good place to be. Not only is it not a very good place to be it can be hard to get out of a spiritual ditch! So we need to be sure to keep our eyes focused on God. When things, people, and circumstances come and try to get your eyes off of God don't let them! Make up in your mind that you will stand on the word of God. "I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward."~Philippians 3:13-14 (Amplified)

The key to Philippians 3:13-14 is not just pressing but forgetting those things that are behind us. How are we to reach ahead and strive to be all that we can be in Christ if we are still looking behind us? Have you ever seen anyone running a race win that kept turning around and seeing what or who was behind them? I have not. When I was a little girl I use to love running the track with my dad. He taught me at a young age that in order to run to my full ability that I could not look back. I always wanted to know how close he was to me, but when I kept my eyes focused on the finish I ran with so much more speed and determination. In our walk with Christ we can not focus on the former things. We have to stay focused and press our way forward!

If you do not take anything else away from this blog today take away the fact that it is not enough to stay focused on God. We have to stay focused and keep moving forward in Him. It is not enough to get in our car and put the destination in our GPS. We have to drive where it tells us to drive. If we just sit in the car put in the destination and wait to magically arrive we will be very disappointed. My friend it is not going to happen. The same is true with our walk with Christ. We can not just read the word and not be doers of the word. We can not hear from God on what direction we need to take and not go forth in what He directs us to do. If we don't stay focused and press forward we will never get to the place in Him that He desires us to be! Stay focused brothers and sisters and keep pressing forward!