A Life of Focus

This past week, Darrin Allen from the Yearly Meeting office did a great job as he brought our Founders Day message. He spoke from Hebrews 12 and shared with us the need to be a congregation that has focus, discipline, and teamwork. I was struck with the simplicity of his message but also the challenge. On paper, those three qualities may seem easy and obvious. But, in real life, it's always a challenge to live with a sense of focus, discipline, and teamwork.

One of the words I keyed in on was the word "focus". In his book, Wide Awake, author and pastor Erwin McManus writes about the power of focus. Here is what he has to say:

"You essentially self-medicate with apathy to keep yourself under control. You took care of all those out-of-control, un-realistic dreams and passions, and now you're just like everyone else. Instead of harnessing your energy, you decided to conserve it. When a person's light shines too brightly, everyone else will complain about its intensity. You can choose to live with your light on pilot, or you can develop the powerof a focused life. Focus allows you to live a life of full intensity with all your passions fueling your momentum in a singular direction. Focus isn't about less but about more. It is the ability to interconnect all you are and all you do around a central theme."

McManus goes on to write that two key components to living a focused life are concentration and convergence. In concentration, we direct all our energies and resources to a specific task, idea, and direction. This means we might have to make some adjustments. We may need to start concentrating all of our energy and resources on where we are going. We need to set our eyes on where God is calling us...and to not look back. In convergence, all of our talents, giftedness, skills, passions, intellect, and experience is harnessed to unleash our highest potential. This is important because, as McManus writes: "Without focus, not only do obstacles overwhelm us, but we also become distracted and diffused by opportunities."

We may not realize it but we often tend to live reactively rather then proactively. When we live reactively, we live our lives by default rather then design. We live according to the expectations of those around us. When we live proactively, we choose to design our lives according to God's call upon our lives. To be a focused person is to live with concentration and convergence and to not be thrown off by the distractions and obstacles that will come our way.

Do you feel you live your life with focus?