Daily Devotional – 2/22/17 “What are you focused on?”

I was watching this game show the other night called ‘idiotest.’ In the game, a person is given a question like, “You have a one-dollar bill. How many sodas can you buy?” The picture shows a drink machine with grape soda $.50, diet bubble $.15 and bubble zero $.25 along with a sign that says quarters only. Your choices are 8, 2, 0 and 4. What’s your answer? If you said anything other than 0, you were incorrect. See, for some all we see is a dollar and the prices of the drinks but if you paid close attention, it said, quarters only. How many of us would have missed it? And how many of us miss things daily because we focused in on the wrong thing? Think about it. If you were thirsty and hadn’t had a drink in days and I hand you a cup that’s dirty on the outside, would you drink from it? Many of us would say no because all we are focused on is the dirt on the outside instead of seeing the clean water inside. We allowed the outside dirt, to keep us from getting the clean water we so desperately needed on the inside. Now, we’re lying in the gutter of some dry place taking shallow breathes until death shows up to put us out of misery. When all we had to do was shift our focus.

How many of us would be in the place we are if God only focused on our dirt and not the possibility of how we’d look clean? How many of us would have the testimony, right now today, of “Had it not been for the Lord, on my side” or even “He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs?” Anybody else besides me? See, had it not been for God whose focus was on my potential and not my past, I’d still be lost. Had it not been for God focusing on our restoration instead of our scars; we’d still be raggedy and not worth a nickel. Had it not been for God focusing on the probable likelihood we could be used, we’d still be jumping from bed to bed, from alcohol to drugs, from club to club and mess to mess. Yet because He didn’t focus on what we were, He saw who we could become. Because God didn’t focus on where we came from, He saw where we can go. Now, the question is, what are you focused on? Are you still trying to figure out if the glass is half empty or half full or have you realized it’s a glass that can be refilled? Are you focused on who left or has your focus shifted on who is to come? Are you focused on what you lost or have you shifted to what you’re about to be blessed with? What are you focused on?