Where's Your Focus?

I have been listening to a lot of teachings and doing a lot of reading over the past month here. I wish I had heard some of these things a long time ago, it would have saved me a lot of unnecessary pain and heartache. I wanted to just share some things I read in a workbook I am working through called, “Basic Training for the Supernatural ways of Royalty” by Kris Vallotton. The workbook goes along with the actual book which I have yet to read; but the concept is understanding your identify as a redeemed child of God. Basically, it teaches you how to walk out who you were created to be rather than submitting to the standards that the world tells you to live by. I’m just going to pull portions directly from the book, because it’s so good, Kris is talking about what we believe becoming our reality…

“The first principle of belief to consider is this: that which you focus on will determine your reality. Every day, all day long, our minds are receiving information from the world around us and interpreting our experiences. Our minds filter out that which we have learned to be irrelevant and enable us to focus in on what is most important. ..”
He goes on to talk about the connection between our imaginations, our thoughts and our hearts.
“ That which fills our daydreams and our thoughts - that which is important to us - is connected to the heart, which is the seat of our emotions and desires…This explains why whatever we focus on will become our reality, for that which captures our attention, focus, and imagination will fill our hearts, that which fills our hearts will fill our lives, for life flows from the heart.”
“What I am realizing about many of us is that we spend much of our lives reacting to what we don’t want to be instead of responding to the call of God on our lives. We waste a lot of energy trying not to be something. In order to not be something, I have to keep it in front of me so I can avoid it. The crazy thing is that I reproduce what I imagine. If I see what I don’t want to be, just envisioning it causes me to reproduce it…we break out of this prison by responding to the call of God on our lives and meditating on his vision for us.”
Here he is specifically talking about bitterness and jealousy…
“The point here is that as long as our focus is locked on what we or other people have done or not done, our focus cannot be locked on what we care called to do and what God is doing. Forgiveness is a vital step in repenting of our wrong focus. The lie we believe when we fixate on that which other people have done or have not done to us, as well as that which we have done or not done, is that these things are a greater reality than the reality of that which God has done or will do for us.”

After reading this, I really started to pay attention to what I allowed to consume my thoughts. It says in proverbs 4:23 "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." After reading this, I realized that guarding my heart actually begins in my mind. What I allow to penetrate my thoughts will eventually penetrate my heart, and my heart determines the course of my life. We don't typically consider this when we start to relive the past in our minds, or focus on how we've been hurt, or worry about what someone might be thinking about us. It’s one thing to have a fleeting thought, we’re only human. You might not be responsible for the fleeting thought, but you are responsible for whether you choose to entertain it for an extended period of time. Kris talks about the irony of us actually reproducing the very thing we are trying to avoid. Often times we end up thinking ourselves into a state of discouragement, insecurity or anxiety that actually results in missing the solutions to problems when they come; keeping us trapped in situations we are desperate to be freed from. You can usually determine whether something is worth focusing on by the fruit of those thoughts. Does it solve a problem? Make you feel good about yourself? Make you anxious? Give you hope? Does thinking about this make me feel closer to God or further away from God? I would challenge you to take notice of what happens when you make a conscious decision to change your focus. The battle is won in the mind.

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done." - Philippians 4:6