Pay Attention

So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.

Romans 10:17 (NLT)

I am very easily distracted. Not all the time (like when I’m teaching or preaching), but a lot of the time. In a conversation with someone, we often times end up talking about stuff which never had anything remotely to do with the original conversation. I can steer a conversation off course really fast! Of course, then there’s also the dinging of my cell phone, the email popping up on my computer, the blogs to write, the voicemails to return, the books to read, the sermons to prep, and a few other things which demand my attention.

This world is full of distractions. For the current generation of teens and young adults, your life is lived as one big distraction. It’s not a diss. It’s true. Think about this: social media is built on the premise of distraction. We call it “sharing.” But, in reality, it’s just scrolling through a million different people’s random postings, pics, or videos.  By doing so, we’re never focused on one thing for too long. We move from one thought or topic to another within seconds – sometimes in milliseconds.

When this distractedness starts to creep into our faith life, we experience a slow fade away from God. When we don’t maintain our focus on the beauty, majesty, power, love, and grace of Jesus, we start to forget it even existed – just like the pics your friend posted which you looked at only a minute ago. When scroll past the gospel in our life, it no longer has a profound affect upon it. It’s becomes one more thing we used to see, but we’ve moved on now.

However, in our life as Christians, our focus must be always on Jesus. We can’t scroll past, we must scroll to. As Paul put it in our verse today, “faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.” In other words, if we want our faith to grow, we must focus on the Gospel about Jesus. Focus on it. Marinate on it throughout the day.

So, what is this Gospel? I’ll break it down for you in simple terms. God loves you unconditionally. God forgives you for the mistakes you’ve made. Jesus (God) died for those mistakes to clear your path back to Him. He wants to spend eternity with you in perfect joy – no sorrow, pain, misery, or death anymore. Today, and every day, marinate on this truth. Repeat it over and over when the distractions of the world try to tear you away from it.