Devotionals by Dale O'Shields

Adjusting Your Focus

Any quality camera has an important feature; a focus function. To take great pictures, focus is essential. When a lens is not properly focused, images become distorted and blurred. Focus gives definition and enables us to appreciate and enjoy what the camera captures.

We all live life through a lens. We see life, people, and God through a certain internal lens called attitude and perspective. The focus of this lens will determine the images we see around us.

There are many things that can and will blur the focus of our lives. Judgment, prejudice. anger, resentment, jealousy, fear, hurt, offense, ingratitude, and a lot of other things like these, distort our focus. They give us the wrong images of life, people and God.

Unfortunately, when our focus has become blurred by such things, we usually fail to recognize the distortion that has happened in our own soul. We accept this warped view as reality, when it’s actually the projection of our own pain and problems. This sets us up for wrong reactions, bad decisions, and a whole lot of mental and emotional misery.

God has given us a way to check our internal focus to make sure it is right and healthy. The Apostle Paul provided us a list of qualities that are evident in someone who has the right focus:

“ … when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” - Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)

Here God listed 9 qualities that indicate a properly focused life. When these are present in us, we can be sure that we are seeing things the way the Lord wants us to see them. When they are absent, we can be sure that our focus is off and our view of life, others and the world is blurred and distorted. The absence of these fruit not only produces problems for us, it affects our walk with God. A wrong focus truly is sinful. It keeps us from the life God wants us to live.

How’s your focus? Do you need a readjustment of the lens of your soul? The good news is, through recognition of our sin, honest confession of it to God, and a yielding to the Holy Spirit’s control, our focus will be rightly adjusted and our view of life, others and God made right and beautiful!

Dale O'Shields

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