The Focus Fight

My Focus Fight: The Battle to live out my Focused Priorities to accomplish the work God has prepared for me to do

Using the lanes. I once had a conversation with a co-worker about how we felt as though we were traveling on a highway at an uncontrollable, and unsustainable, speed. We felt trapped, as if in a corner with no other option, and we wondered how we could possibly continue to perform at this pace.

Life moved on, and at some point along the way, I realized we aren’t made to exit, even as the pace continues to press on, and press in. We are made to persevere, to be on the highway, to achieve and accomplish. And do good. (Eph. 2:10, 2 Tim. 3:16-17)

I came to understand that we aren’t cornered as if we have no options.

When we live according to how we are made, according to a biblically-based understanding of how we are made, we discover that we are set free from the pressure of the highway, and we find rest. We’ve been given a place of freedom and rest if we’ll live according to how we are made.

So the big question is how are we made? We need to know in order to live according to it. I answer with 3 biblically-sourced statements to form our understanding:

  • To begin with, we are made by design. See the world around you, the intricate patterns, the human body, the stars in the sky, the waves in the ocean, etc. This beginning statement establishes the foundation of how we are made.

  • The second statement is our design has a creator and sovereign ruler, and that creator and ruler is God. (Gen. 1 & 2, Romans 1:19-20) He is the creator of a world of order; we are his workmanship. (Eph 2:10)

  • The third statement is that our designer, our creator and ruler is great (Jer. 10:6; Ps. 145:3; Ps 96:4; Ps. 47:2, 7;,Jer. 32:17; Matt. 22:29, etc) and he is good (Ps. 100:5; Ps. 106:1; Ps. 145:9; etc.). The simple prayer “God is great God is good…”says it all.

For us, if he is creator and therefore ruler, it matters whether or not he is both great and good. And he is both.

Being great means he is powerful over all. Being good means he has our best interest in mind, in all he does, in all that he has power over, which is everything.

And our being able apply these things that we know, to believe these things to be true, to choose to believe them to be true matters.

It matters because it allows us to remain on the highway, keep the pace, and find rest in the middle of it all.

This isn’t always the connection we make.

Yet, our ability to persevere, to achieve, to accomplish, to do good and find rest, absolutely relates to our view that we were created by design, by a good and great God.

Which leads us to the point in both the diagram and in life.

And the point is God.

God is designer. God is creator. God is great. God is good.

When we embrace this understanding of God, we are rightly oriented to the one who is in ultimate control.

It’s not me or you.

The point is not mine or your greatness. The point is not mine or your goodness. The point is His greatness and His goodness.

The point is to acknowledge Him. (1 Chronicles 28:9-10) To glorify Him.

When we get this point, placing our focus on God, not ourselves, we are rightly oriented to how we are made. We discover we are made to remain on the highway, being set free from its pressure, and we find rest.

If ever we have wondered about our life purpose, our activity, the reason for all the moving parts of this highway we travel, and if ever we have wondered how to live well, of all the ways we have pursued living well and found anywhere from a little to a lot of success, only to find our efforts fail us at one point or another, embracing this point is to embrace what we were made to embrace. It is to embrace our true orientation, orderly and intentionally established by design, to be with Him, to acknowledge and glorify Him.

But, we have a bent to want to acknowledge ourselves. And this separates us from Him. It is rooted in all of mankind because of a choice made by God’s first created man and woman. (Genesis 3)

God’s first created man and woman, Adam and Eve, choose to doubt God’s greatness and His goodness.

In turn, they disobeyed Him and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and evil that he told them not to eat. He gave them everything they needed. He gave them all creation to rule over and He gave them Himself. And they choose their own way, with a little help. They choose their own way and they found themselves separated from God, hiding, feeling shame and dishing out blame all because of the choice they made to not trust God, being unable to reign over their own desires.

God, in that very moment, promised a rescuer. (Gen. 3) Today we know his name to be Jesus. (Gen. 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-25)

In Jesus, our rescuer, we are saved from the hell of having to prove our worth over and over again by our good deeds. Even as these are the very deeds we were made to do; we were never made to be measured by them.

Our inability to be perfect and to reign over sin in our life, just like Adam and Eve, is wonderfully exposed by the very truth that Jesus paid the biggest penalty to bear the cost of it. We can stop the covering, the hiding, the proving. What are we striving to prove? If we had the ability to be perfect, and were expected to live it out, his death was in vain.

But no, Jesus died and rose again, defeating sin and death. So we can live in the forever forgiveness of our sin, whether we wear that sin on our sleeves, or attempt to tuck it in deep in our souls.

There is no difference: our worth is firmly established.

And it is not measured by our work, our actions, our accomplishments, our pace or our ability to successfully perform. No, it is measured by the work, action and accomplishment of Jesus. The performance of Jesus. Because of Him, we are perfect in the eyes of God, even as we continue to grow, messing up, receiving forgiveness and continuing to move further and further from the pull of the sin in our lives. (Heb. 10:14)

This knowledge should be rest for our souls.

This is the gospel:

  • Our sin is real, and

  • Because of Jesus, even though sin in us remains, it is really and fully forgiven. (Hebrews 10)

  • We are His and measured by His immeasurable love for us, a love that declared we are worth dying for.  

We are not measured by accomplishment, achievement, position, appearance, wealth, poverty, houses, cars, vacation spots, neighborhood, athletic ability, athletic opportunity, injuries, artistic prowess, fame, fortune, cultural influence, notoriety, talent, ability, knowledge, education, family lineage, or any other good or great thing done or spoken or felt or thought of by anyone.

What is our chosen response to such a liberating reality?

We can choose to deny Jesus, rejecting that our efforts have been wrong to pursue, not good enough. It can easily be felt as a personal offense, just too much to let go of hard work and personal effort that should be acknowledged.

Or, we can choose to accept Jesus and still keep pressing on along the highway, remaining slaves to performance as it continues to press in. The world will continue to reward and model performance all day long.

Or we can choose to accept our need for forgiveness and actually believe Jesus. We can let go of the controls, let go of our assumed economy of the world that drives the pace of the highway around us, confess our sin and receive forgiveness. It is there to be had, and rest is there to be found.

Regardless of our choice, we are really set free, even when all the pressures remain, even when all the work remains, the impossible, overwhelming pace of the highway remains. Even when all the hurtful, demanding and the kind, encouraging people remain. There is no difference, people don’t establish our freedom, our rest. Jesus does, and He did. And continues to daily. (Lamentations 3: 22-23; Matthew 6:34)

Will we choose to believe it is true, for ourselves, for me, for you?

If we allow our design to inform our understanding, and we choose to believe, we will find more and more we are set free to offer ourselves. (Ps 34:8)

In fact we will find we were made to offer ourselves, not bound by the flow of the traffic all around us, but free to choose and serve and love and walk in the good deeds God prepared for us beforehand, pressing on and pressing in on the highway, instead of it pressing on and pressing in on us.(Eph. 2:10)

In fact, we discover the Place of Freedom and Rest Jesus gives to us.

In this Place of Freedom and Rest we have in Christ, we discover we are free to set the pace, rather than being paced. We are free to accomplish the things God has prepared in advance for us to do and get to set the pace in our lives.

We get to choose to use the lanes. Perhaps for the first time we become aware that there are lanes at all. A fast lane, a middle lane, a slow lane and an exit lane. When we are not measured by our performance, we are able to think, to discern, to be authentic - what is our focus? What are our priorities? What matters most, to me?

We can freely place our tasks in the appropriate lanes, giving them the appropriate focus. In fact, we may even identify things that we can put on the exit lane, clearing our path to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, rather than carrying the weight of accomplishing something because we need to accomplish it.

In fact, we aren’t identified by either our good works or bad. By our “accomplishments” or our “failures”.  A simple analogy I read once is about  bowling shoes. Think about it. You use bowling shoes, and then you return them after use. You may have loved the shoes you used and hope to use that particular pair again next time. Or, they may have been so uncomfortable you’d never want to experience wearing them again. Either way, you return the shoes you used. They don’t stick with you, identifying you, labeling you, defining you. You walk out of the bowling alley identified still by the work of Jesus, having had some fun trying out pair of shoes you may or may not want to wear again.

Jesus freed us to do good works without being identified by those works, needing those works to give us worth, acceptance, completion. We are complete in Him, by His word, equipped for every good work that God prepared in advance for us. (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Eph. 2:10) Yes, we are actually created in Christ for good works, and He actually prepared them, in advance, and equips us through His word that we would walk in them.

When we live according to how we were made, we

  • set our focus on Him, on His glory rather than our own,

  • discover freedom from keeping the impossible pace, being set free to instead be a pace setter for our daily flow of traffic,

  • continue to achieve, accomplish and do good, just as we were made to do, not as the world pressures us to do, but as God has prepared in advance for us to do, and

  • ultimately, we find rest.  

Let’s fight to live according to this, to get out of the Corner we may be in and live according to how we were made. We have nothing to prove. Just things to aim for, starting with achieving for Him, not for ourselves.

Then, the next thing is to fight to stir up one another to remember to live according to it. We are forgiven and free; it’s what allows us, equips us, to persevere in love and doing good, remaining on the highway. (Heb. 10:24)

My Focus Fight Daily Battle is one tool to help you along the way. It’s a tool that reminds us daily to use the lanes and gives us a practical way of doing so. I’d love to connect with you and pass along this resource. You can either email me directly or sign up to receive the resource directly to your email using this link.

 © Copyright 2020 Jill Williams. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate without express written permission.