Month: July 2020

Focus on the Inside

My mentoring group recently read Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald.  The book contained many lessons about creating an orderly life and following a disciplined approach in order to enhance the likelihood of long-term peace and prosperity.  These lessons are especially important in 2020 because today there are many distractions that can take us away from the pursuit of a Godly, orderly life. 

Life is complicated enough without having to worry about getting sick from coronavirus, educating our kids effectively, living with societal unrest, and managing our business in the midst of a pandemic.  With all of those extra factors hitting at one time, it is easy to get distracted and find it difficult to get back on track.

Related to this is one of MacDonald’s key points which is that we are trained to manage our public world well but not our private world.  We are taught to emphasize our appearance and image because the world judges us by our education, job, car, house, and other easily-measured things.

The problem is that, as we get older, life typically gets more complicated and demanding.  In order to successfully complete the race and claim the victory, we must intentionally and diligently focus on our mental growth and endurance.  If we ignore our private world, cracks will form and we will see failures in certain area of our lives.  This brings us to our verse for the day which is from Proverbs 4:23:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.

The way MacDonald puts it, what you do on the inside will someday “cry aloud from the housetop”.  Here are some things he says we should do to get our private worlds in order:

  • Understand what drives you and compare it to where Jesus is calling you; if different, move in the direction of your calling
  • Understand your purpose and focus on that unwaveringly
  • Practice “release” from being conformed to the world’s expectations
  • Reduce time “leaks” – keep a time journal and analyze it; budget your time far in advance and use thoughtful criteria for managing it.
  • Listen to God through your prayer life; listen to mentors and critics
  • Use all you learn in service to others as Christ did
  • Read – when we are not reading, struggle often follows; do a lot of “offensive” (proactive) reading to put building blocks in place
  • Solitude & silence
  • Reflection & meditation
  • Prayer and worship
  • Journaling

In order to incorporate most or all of these activities into our life, we need to intentionally and consistently order our private world to make them a priority.  To help us work in that direction, here are a few questions for discussion.

  1. Have you recently found it more difficult than usual to focus on developing your private world?  If so, what are some of the challenges you are personally facing?
  2. Do you have any examples of cracks that formed in your life or in the lives of others that were caused by ignoring your/their private world?
  3. What are some time leaks you can reduce or eliminate in order to focus more on your private world?
  4. If you had more time to focus on your private world, what are some areas where you would most like to focus?
  5. What are some practical strategies you can employ to prioritize ordering your private world?

To Do More, Focus on Less

When my kids were younger and active in sports, I took thousands of pictures of them in action.  One of my skilled photographer friends shared some tricks to make sports photography more interesting.  One idea he recommended was to reduce the aperture setting which lets less light in and blurs everything in front of and behind the image.  This highlights the subject, as in this picture:

It occurred to me that we as Christian men may be able to use the same idea of blurring or softening the amount of focus we place on certain things so that other things can come more clearly into focus.

Jeremiah 29:13 says “You will seek me and find me with all of your heart.”

If we are all being honest, not many of us can claim that we are seeking God with all of our heart.  And, honestly, I don’t think it is even possible to do so 100% of the time.  There are simply too many distractions – especially in our world today.  BUT we can take steps to move in the right direction by doing two things:

  1. Recognize and acknowledge some of the things that are keeping us from seeking God with all of our heart, and
  2. Decide what we need to focus on and make those areas more of a priority

So, for many of us right now, the items in #1 (distractions) might look like this picture:

You can see that there is another list about six feet behind and to the left of this one but it is blurry.  If we are focused on the distractions, we can’t read what the other one says.  But what if we keep our “aperture” the same (meaning we stay narrowly focused on a few things) but simply change the point of our focus?  We would end up with the image below with God in focus and the distractions blurred out.

It sounds so easy “on paper” but is difficult to put in to practice so let’s break it down and make it simple. For one day, try eliminating three things:

  1. Social media (all of it….you won’t miss it and they won’t really miss you)
  2. All news – local, national, print, radio, tv….all of it….I promise you’ll be ok
  3. All political discussions.  They’re a waste of time.  If you already agree with the other person, why waste the time?  If you disagree with the other person, you are not going to change their mind.

If it goes well, try it for another day.  If it doesn’t go well, try backing off and picking one of the three to try again.  As you are able to free up time by eliminating distractions, you’ll have more capacity to turn your heart toward loving God and loving people.

Questions:

  1. Where is your focus?  Do you find yourself thinking more about the God list or the distraction list?
  2. How would you respond to someone who says that it is vitally important to keep up with the news daily in order to be 100% up to speed with what is going on in the world?
  3. What do you think would be the worst thing that might happen if you avoided all news and social media for one full day?
  4. Besides the time you will save, what are some potential benefits of occasionally taking a daily break from news & social media?
  5. From the “God list” in the picture above, which one or two areas would you be most likely to prioritize if you had extra time to dedicate to them?