Staying focused

I recently visited a friend's blog and noticed just how cute her blog was. Naturally, green with envy, I went straight to the blogsite that she downloads her templates from, and got a free one for my own blog (hence the new look). Now, the title of this blog is "going godward". How godward and am I going if I'm more focused on the cuteness of my blog than the gospel? The answer is: not very. I do like the new template as the background of my blog, and I think it suits me, but that is not my main focus--or at least it wasn't in the beginning of goinggodward. But, alas, I have lost my focus. The reason I am even bothering to take the time to write these thoughts down is because they pertain to something that is actually gospel-centered. Wait...weren't we talking about cute blogs?? Yes, yes we were and now I will make my point. We are so easily distracted. I mean, really easily distracted. It only took me a total of about five or six posts to start losing focus of what my vision of this blog would be. I wanted to make it cute--not relevant.

I don't think it is very uncommon that people are distracted. Distraction is a very powerful tool used by Satan. It only takes a moment for us to take our sights off of Jesus and begin to be distracted. This can take many forms--busy schedules, work deadlines, never-ending laundry, playdates, blogging and many more serious distractions. Our postmodern culture is also a culprit. We are unlikely to sit though an entire movie or tv show without changing the channel at least once. A commercial comes on and we can't wait the whole two minutes for our show to return, we must change the channels to occupy those minutes--we are easily distracted. I admit, my sights have not been on Jesus the last few days. My thoughts are far from being God-centered. I have indulged my subconcious with, more or less, fairy tales. This is not intended to be a confession session for me, but just to say, I get distracted--we all do.

It seems to me that we forget we are at war here. Spiritual war. There are battles going on in our lives that we couldn't wrap our minds around if we tried. Ephesians 6 is clear that we are to armor ourselves in preparation for this battle. It is easy to talk about spiritual warfare but few of us actually operate that way. We don't make war with our sin--we indulge in it and weep bitterly over the consequences. In light of these thoughts of distraction, my prayers will be that the Lord would increase my desire for Him--that He would give me grace in my time of distraction. I pray those things for you all as well.

So, I will leave the "cute" template for my goinggodward blog, but I will not be distracted again. This blog is for the gospel.