Where is Your Focus?
by Jilly Lyon-Taylor
I find eternity a difficult concept to grasp completely with my finite human understanding. The thought of our lives continuing for ever and ever seems hard to comprehend, but that is what we are promised when we believe in Jesus Christ as our Saviour. God is eternal, and we will be with Him for eternity.
In addition, we know that God has always existed. We are told in Ephesians 1:4 that even before He created the world, He chose us and planned for us to be adopted into His family as His sons and daughters. He has always planned to be our Father and He will be a Father to us for eternity! This knowledge should give us great peace, joy and an assurance of our value and worth, but often the problems that we face in our lives, and the wounding from the past, make it difficult to keep our focus on these truths. The issues that we are struggling with are often at the forefront of our minds and can seem overwhelming, entangling us in a web of self-pity and discouragement.
However, in today’s verse Paul seems to be encouraging us to fix our eyes, not on the negative things that we see in our lives, but on the unseen truths of who we are in God, and who He is for us. When compared with eternity, the troubles we may be facing are but ‘light and momentary afflictions’ (1 Corinthians 4:17). They may seem overwhelming, but they’re temporary compared to eternity with a Father who loves us and will never leave us.
If you are facing problems today, try to take your focus off the difficulties and fix your eyes on what is unseen but eternal. There is an old chorus that says:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Helen Howarth Lemmel (1922)
Prayer: Lord, I am sorry that I have allowed the difficulties I am facing to be at the forefront of my mind. I choose now to focus on You, and to fix my eyes, not on the problems in my life, but, on the unseen truths about You that are eternal. Thank You that You will always be my Father, and that You will never leave me or forsake me. Amen.
Jilly Lyon-Taylor is part of the Leadership Team at Ellel Pierrepont. She worked in publishing and then with children in Hong Kong before concentrating on being a full-time mother and serving in the local church. Her desire to see people healed led her to the Luke Nine Eleven Training Scheme(NETS) at Pierrepont, and now she teaches and ministers there.
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