Daily Devotional

Jesus said some things that were pretty hard to comprehend. For example, at one point He said if you have faith you can tell a mountain to go jump in the ocean and it will do it. (Mark 11:23). I imagine that only happens, however, if our focus is on Jesus and not on the mountain! Because honestly, if we focused on the mountain, we'd solely think about how our words couldn't cause a pebble to move, let alone a mountain. But I think we need to spend more time telling our mountains about Jesus, not Jesus about our mountains. I think we need to adjust our focus.

You know as a kid I enjoyed looking at 3-D or optical illusion books that had hidden images in them. I was always able to play this trick with my eyes where I could just cross them and then I'd immediately be able to see the hidden image. I was able to see this image because I wasn't focused on what was in front of me but rather I was focused on what I should be seeing. But I had younger cousins who were never able to see the image and they never understood why. I tried to explain to them that the reason was that they were focusing on what they could see, not on what they should see. Obviously, this makes no sense to a six-year-old, it barely makes sense to some of you. But I had this trick, where I'd encourage them to put the book directly in front of their faces, touching their noses, then stare at the center of the page and slowly move the book away from their face while continuing to focus on the center of the page and nothing else. As they continued to move it, the image they were supposed to see became visible. What was funny though was as soon as that image became clear everything else around it became blurry.

My point is that when we try to see God in our mountains, we may have a hard time seeing Him because we're focusing on the wrong thing. However, when we shift our focus off of all of those things and fix our eyes on Him, He becomes more clear and the Bible says He perfects our faith. What we focus on is at the center of our interests and activities and the success of our race is incumbent upon how well we focus on Jesus.

"New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation"