The continuing decline of morality and abandonment of God in our culture and churches highlights the need for focus and discipline in our lives. We need to reorient our minds to embrace a complete focus on God while disciplining our actions and endeavors to reflect our devotion to Christ. Otherwise, we are no different from those who don’t know Jesus.
We are called to be different, to live lives that are set apart from the world (Romans 12:2). As we observe the downward spiral of humanity, we gnash our teeth and shake our heads and fists, but we never see ourselves as part of the problem.
Until we focus our lives on glorifying God, we are abandoning the same God to whom we swear devotion. We’re not so different from the culture after all. As a people, we’re not very good at maintaining a focus on anything. We are far more likely to flit from interest to interest in a world of never-ending fascinations than we are to focus on a single course of study or action. Focus and discipline are things we only read about in books or hear discussed by the uber-successful. It wasn’t always like this.
Over time, Satan has been inflicting a slow but ever-increasing amount of distraction into our culture. Focus is now such a rare thing that many hiring managers count it as one of the most sought-after traits when vetting potential employees. Smartphones are rewiring the brains of people, young and old alike. That’s not an exaggeration, but a fact backed up by a growing body of research. As life becomes more comfortable and convenient, focus and discipline are becoming relics of the past.
As important as focus and discipline are to our physical bodies and lives, they are even more important to our spiritual souls. If our focus is not on God, it will be on things that are not of God (Matthew 6:24). Another word for things not of God is sin. Therefore, we will either live with a focus on God or a focus on sinful desires and behaviors. Only one of those will end well (Romans 8:6-8).
Without discipline, we cannot maintain our focus on Christ. We will never learn how to be like Him unless we commit to engaging with His Word every day (Psalm 119:105). Without spending daily time in prayer, we will never understand who He is and what He has for us to do.
Without focus and discipline, it will be impossible to live a life that is pleasing and devoted to Christ. If your mind is not always on Him, the temptations of this world will be too much for you to handle (James 1:14-15). None of us is strong enough to resist the devil on our own. We need the strength and mercy of Jesus to overcome the distractions of the evil one (Ephesians 6:11-12). Our days will be wasted pursuing selfish pleasures and desires if we aren’t diligent in the way we discipline our bodies and habits.
We must live differently. We must choose to follow Jesus in every minute of every day or find ourselves swept away by the cares of this world (Luke 21:34). Jesus is coming back and He will demand an accounting for the way we spent the time He gave us to glorify His name (2 Corinthians 5:10). Is your focus and discipline on God and His Word or on yourself and what you want in life? Are you living a life worthy of His death (Colossians 1:9-10)?