Finding Focus: Overcoming Life’s Distractions to Deepen Your Faith

Hey.

Hey friends.

Welcome back to faithfood woman.

Today we're going to talk about are we living our lives with lukewarm faith or are we all in for God?

Because I don't know about you, but it can be so easy for some of us, right, myself included, to not realize that some of our patterns, some of our thoughts each day are pulling us further away from living a life with Christ, from being focused on God and letting him help guide and lead our lives.

For instance, sometimes I probably try to push or pull the outcome of things or the speed at which things happen in my life instead of waiting on God, right?

And so sometimes I'm.

I'm trying to control what's happening instead of waiting on God.

And while that might not be an idol per se, it is me not going all in on my faith.

Hey friend, are you craving deeper faith, renewed purpose and more joy in your everyday life?

Welcome to Faith Fueled Woman podcast that helps Christian women grow spiritually pursue God's calling and embrace the abundant life he has for you.

I'm Kristin, an encourager, mentor, entrepreneur, wife and mom here to uplift, equip and inspire you with faith filled conversations and biblical wisdom.

Subscribe now so you never miss an episode and join our Faith fueled community for more encouragement.

I'm going to give you a couple questions that you can ask yourself to get re centered in your faith throughout your day and just making sure that our focus is on Christ and it's not on other worldly idols.

As I was reading today's Proverbs 31 first five devotional, they are sharing Hosea 10, 9, 15, which I want to share with you today.

It says so for yourselves.

Righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

And he's basically warning the Israelites because they've kind of gone away from God.

They have other idols and he's trying to tell them, you know, kind of to come back towards him, right if things aren't going to happen.

And I love what is.

It's like Lisa Turkhurst is sharing today's devotional for first five.

And I just want to share a little bit that she says in here.

She says the enemy is very strategic with his plans to derail and distract us.

He's clever by making his temptation seem so harmless.

Why not push the limits, live for now and worry about eternity later?

And then she says Satan wants us to miss the whole point of our Existence, the very purpose for which we were created, to experience God's perfect love in relationship with Him.

But always, but if we are always chasing after other things, we'll never experience the fullness of that love.

And I would go on to say, as well as we were created also to be in a relationship with each other and to show that perfect love towards other people even when it's inconvenient either, even when it's hard, even when we don't feel like it.

Right?

That's the Holy Spirit working through us in the world.

Okay, and then she does explain what the Hebrew word for let's see was it seek means like seeking the Lord.

And basically I think it says let me find it here.

Of course, now I can't.

Okay, here's what it is.

So the word seek in original Hebrew is Darius, I'm sorry, the rash.

And it can also mean turn to the Lord.

So literally he's saying turn to me.

And why this is important in our lives is because when we don't go all in with him, when we choose where or how God's going to be part of our life, right, we don't get to experience him fully.

We are being pulled and stretched in a million directions.

And so it's really easy to just think about God, to only be in a relationship with God and to let ourselves be in charge, right.

So often instead of waiting and listing on Him.

And so today I wanted to share with you a couple questions we can ask ourselves to get re centered and refocused on going all in in our faith with God.

So going from lukewarm to red hot.

And so this is definitely an area that I often struggle with while I most all days make time for, you know, being with God, having quiet time with God, trying to read a devotional or two, you know, opening the Bible.

Most of the time there are days that I don't necessarily like something happens and I just, my normal schedule doesn't happen.

And so maybe later in the day I will or throughout the day I do try to.

I've shared this before, you know, I have a micro gratitude practice, but I'm just giving praise and thanks to God throughout the day.

The things in my life are even the smallest things.

When I walk outside, when I'm in my garden, when I'm making dinner.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't other parts of my life that maybe I am making into an idol, right?

In other words, I'm making it more important or I'm allowing it to Distract me from God.

And so that's the kind of thing we're talking about.

And so many of.

I mean, we're all imperfect, right?

As we know, but we're on a faith journey.

And what I want to do, and I think most of us is we want to keep improving, right?

We want to strengthen that relationship with Christ and we want it to come easier to us because we're all in instead of cherry picking how and when we are showing up in our faith or in our relationship with Christ and that we're putting him above all else, right?

Last episode I shared about having our, you know, a strong foundation built on Christ, right?

On his teachings.

And so we both want to have God or, you know, our relationship and our foundation built on Christ's teaching on the Bible.

But we also want to be looking up, right?

In other words, instead of being worldly and focusing on what the world is telling us are important or should be our idols, we want to be looking up, right to Christ.

What is he telling us?

What is he saying to us?

What does he tell us in the Bible?

So let me jump over to some of these things that I wanted to share with you.

So the first thing is, how do we turn our focus?

How do we turn back towards God if we've found that maybe I have let the busyness of my life, maybe I have allowed other things to creep in that are pulling me away from my faith?

Going to be honest, sometimes my phone does that for me.

Now, I do follow some faith people online and I love saving scripture and things like that.

But the honest truth is I pick up my phone too much.

And that's not always true.

If I'm with someone, if I'm doing something that's.

I don't do that, right?

I'm very focused on what I'm doing.

But if I find myself just sitting there or waiting in line, I do find myself pulling out my phone and going on it, right?

And doing that scroll.

And so for me, that's something that I need to limit because I could be doing something more important right in the world.

And so even if that's talking to the person beside me, right?

Because my faith, the Holy Spirit comes out in those conversations when I'm present.

So the first thing is we can be intentional with our time with God.

And of course, many of us already are.

We have a specific time of day where we might pause and reflect.

We pray, we meditate on God's word.

But if that's not something you do, then that would be the first thing that you can do, or maybe for some of us, it's just adding in another five minutes at a different time of day to get re.

Centered and really get grounded again in our connection to God and what he tells us.

So here's a couple questions that we can ask ourselves.

You know, are we allowing other things to be more important or higher up in our lives than our faith?

Or.

Or are we not?

And you know, so for me, I know that there's things that maybe are distractions in my life that I need to be aware of, and I may be.

And I need to start shifting some of those patterns.

So here's the first question.

What are the distractions in my life that may be taking my attention away from God right now?

And this really just helps us understand where our hearts and have.

Have we drifted and what needs to be refocused.

Okay, so this is the question we can ask ourselves daily, weekly, you know, whenever we can kind of fit it in.

And we can write this down and answer it, you know, as we journal, or we can just have it in our thoughts and take a minute to pause, pose the question to ourselves and then just think about it for a minute and see what comes up for you.

So I'm going to repeat it.

What are the distractions in my life that may be taking my attention away from God right now?

Okay, so the next thing that we can ask ourselves is where am I looking to worldly solutions or idols to provide peace or satisfaction instead of trusting in God once again?

This is just letting us think.

Are we.

Do we have misplaced reliance on things other than God?

And let me be clear, I'm surely not saying if that means we shouldn't go on a walk, you know, get outside, you know, do all these things that are healthy for us, but what we're talking about is are we putting so much more weight that something is so important beyond trusting God, beyond the prayers to God about maybe whatever it is that we're looking for a solution for.

And so I think we just have to be careful.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't do things because definitely we are still supposed to take action, right?

We're supposed to take steps forward in our lives, right?

In other words, we don't.

We're not just praying and saying, okay, God, you know, like, I want to make money, but we never show up in purpose or calling or work, right?

So I'm not saying it's one or the other.

What I'm saying is we don't want to put These worldly solutions or these things above our relationship, above and with God and with trusting him.

So we still have to take action.

We still have to move forward.

We just don't want them to become, you know, so much more important that we think it's.

We're putting all our chips over here, we're all in on this solution of the world instead of also relying and looking to God.

Right?

And so that's what I'm saying.

We just want to kind of, you know, check ourselves and discern if, if that's the case.

And then another question I think that could be good for us is what does it look like for me to return to God today in a practical way?

And so that really comes down to the action I was talking about.

What is it that we could do a little bit different?

What little shift could we make in our lives that would get us God centered and God focused again?

So for me, it might be changing a screensaver on my phone or even having a little note on my phone for a little bit, maybe a scripture or just a little statement that says, you know, like, seek God, you know, or something.

Because sometimes I need visual signals, you know what I'm saying?

Like, it's easy for me to pick up my phone mindlessly, not think about it.

And so if I have little reminders for myself, it can quickly shift me from picking up my phone mindlessly to saying, you know what?

No, I'm going to leave my phone inside.

I'm going to go take a five minute break, sit out back, you know, just take in the beauty of God's creation and then, you know, just ask him a question.

You know, like, God, what do you want me to know?

What do you want me to see?

What do you want me to pay attention today in my life?

And so I think just putting little reminders in your life and saying, like, what is something small that I can do in this moment or in this day that returns me to God?

And with that, I did want to share in Bob Goff's devotional, which I've shared quite a few times.

Catching whimsy today.

He was sharing about if we want to be like Jesus, we have to keep showing up.

And he has for many, many years volunteered at San Quentin Prison, right, helping and talking with some of the prisoners there.

So it's a really great devotional from today.

But the gist is this.

He says there's power in showing up.

Some people are behind actual steel bars and others who appear to be free are equally imprisoned.

And he Just says, keep showing up for whoever's in prison, the imprisoned ones are in your life.

Keep sliding hope and joy and genuine interest under the door.

So the point is a very tangible or practical, practical way we can return to God is by being available to people, right?

Like seeing them, hearing them continue to be presence in their life, let them know that we, we see who they're becoming, to have patience and kindness and love.

Even when maybe the way they've acted in the past hasn't been always wonderful or lovely.

You know, maybe they're bringing their hurt or their hardship into their daily lives, right?

They're bitter or they're angry or they're hurt and they're not maybe showing up.

Right.

In a way that's, that's loving.

And so we can be that person that keeps showing up for them.

Right.

That we can be that steady person that's, you know, has a listening ear.

You know, we just keep telling them, you know, we see them, we know that there's a bright future for them.

But I think that's another practical way we can return to God, which is being of service, being someone that shows up in love, being someone that's available to other people without being pushy.

Right.

With our faith.

And then the last question that I will share is how can I invite God into the areas of my life where I, I'm feeling disconnected or overwhelmed.

And really this is about our heart, right?

Like surrendering and asking God to come into the places where we're struggling the most.

You know, it's that whole, like, I'm going to hold the whole world upon my shoulders, right?

I'm walking through something hard and I'm just going to keep letting all the stress and all the angst and all the worry, all the, I don't know, dissatisfaction, frustration.

I'm just letting it build up within me.

Right.

But the question is, how can we invite God into those areas to allow him to help us to let go of some of that burden, to let go of some of those things because we don't have to do it alone, right?

Right.

We get to do life with Christ.

And so that's the other thing.

So anyways, these are just questions that help you get started, to start reflecting on, you know, are you all in, in your faith, Are you all in with your relationship with God or are we putting other things ahead of Him?

And so, you know, and I think this is an ongoing thing that we have to work on.

And so I just wanted to share that with you today because this particular devotional from first five today really spoke to me, but it really spoke to me in the sense of not getting too far into my week or my month where I don't come back and reflect and ask my questions or ask myself questions that are going to help me come closer or, you know, deepen my relationship with, with God instead of pulling me away because it's so easy to get pulled away.

And so I just need to start being a little more reflective and maybe a little more critical of how I spend my my time sometimes.

And surely I'm not saying every minute you're not you're never going to have downtime or do something that you want to do, but it's really about how are we living and where are we, what are we going towards?

So until next time, I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you next.

And two quick things, if you haven't already joined my email news list, go over to KristenFitch.com and join my community.

But while you do it, you can either download my Reignite your passion workbook to really jumpstart healing.

You know, kind of aligning what God wants for you and how he designed you with what you're pursuing in your life, or I have my Joyful devotional.

It's a 15 day devotional for how we can seek more fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

You can grab both of those on my website and others on my KristinFitch.com freebies page.

So go over there and check that out.

Thanks again for listening to the show and if you enjoyed today's episode, we would love it if you could take a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple podcast because it helps helps our show get discovered by more people.