Sometimes listening for inspiration, listening for God's voice can be hard. There are so many distractions today with all the smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, gaming systems, and whatever else they've been coming out with. I know personally, that just finding enough uninterrupted time to sit here, pray, read, and write can be a challenge. It seems like I can't set my phone down for more than a minute before it starts beeping, buzzing, and chiming with notification after notification, calls, emails, and text and then the temptation builds to check it, distracting me from what I originally set out to do, write something that honors the Father in heaven, and maybe encourage others if I'm very blessed. I've been thinking about distractions a lot recently as I have been struggling to not check my phone every five minutes during the day for the last couple of weeks. My husband and I are in the process of buying our first home, and it seems like it is all I can do not to check my email. This is a good, happy, exciting kind of distraction, but the fact remains that it is still a distraction, still something taking my focus off what I am supposed to be doing, still something distracting me from God and the task He has given me. This distraction has made it difficult to write some days recently, to really clear my mind and focus during prayer so that I can hear from the Lord.
At first to be honest, I didn't relate the struggle I was having in finding inspiration to write to my being so distracted lately. I tried to find lots of other things to blame it on instead, fatigue and stress being the two biggest things. But on the weekends I have a rule that I power down, I stay off social media, only check my mobile games a couple of times a day and instead spend the extra time really in the moment with my family, and the Lord. It's my way of making sure that I am not just walking through life but that I'm really experiencing it and building relationships with the people that I say are important to me. This weekend though I caught myself on my phone frequently. At every beep, buzz, or vibration I was picking it up to check what it said. It didn't matter who I was with or what I was doing, I checked. I defended this as me just being excited about news on the house, and didn't see it as a problem because most of the time I am good about it. But last night when I was going to bed I caught myself putting my bible aside to check my email yet again, knowing that it wasn't likely to be my realtor as it was about 11pm. This caused me to pause. I thought back over the last couple of weeks that I've been having difficulty writing and realized this wasn't the first time I had done this. I had often been stopping my prayers, or stopping my studies to check my phone. I had been doing repeatedly without even realizing it. I had let my excitement become a stumbling block stealing my focus from the important things, and from the task at hand.
I know that I am not the only one ever guilty of this, as humans we often get wrapped up in the new and exciting. We are easily distracted by the new and tend to get tunnel vision when it comes to it, but we can't let that come between us and what's really important, God and our families. That's what I was reminded of last night as I set my bible aside for the phone, I saw my actions and was disappointed in myself, I switched back to reading and turned the volume off on my phone, then I made the decision to do better. I decided that I needed God time to be just that God time, and I had to put the distractions away, because it is in those quiet moments with Him that He does the most work in us, whether we know it or not. I hope that by sharing this today I encouraged you today to focus more, and get distracted less. Be blessed.
Joshua 1:8
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Psalm 119:15
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
Proverbs 4:25
Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
Romans 8:5
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
Colossians 3:2
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
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