We know we can trust the Bible. We know that Jesus is our savior. But we still…often feel set apart from God. Why? What are some of the typical internal distractions in our mind that keep us from connecting with God? These are things that keep us from reading and meditating on the Bible, praying, and reaching out and loving others. The things that God wills for all of us to do just in case you are wondering what God’s will for your life may actually be.

Here are five common internal distractions we all face:

Lack of Faith: This is not a random we have to believe in something type of faith. It is also not a generic faith in some sort of goodness. The Christian faith is a well thought through, calculated, and investigated determination of what is true beyond what we can see from the senses, based on the reality and evidence we have been presented with. Just like we trust our car will start in the morning without knowing all the exact details, we still have faith it will start when we turn the key. With this premise, we can go forward to organize our time, and we can get to know God through our faith.

I believe faith is best defined as an active trust in God even when we don’t know where we are in the story of our lives.

Lack of Freedom:  In the book of Hosea, it talks about God pouring out his love freely.  Anything that takes us away from God’s commandments destroys our freedom and disconnects us from our Father God. Drug addiction is limiting, pornography is limiting, political power for power’s sake is limiting, food excess is limiting, successes for success sake it limiting, and by definition the life of the “material girl” is limited. But loving the Lord our God with all our heart, loving our neighbor as our self, and anticipating spending eternity with the creator of the universe is freeing. It may not be as complicated as we may think sometimes.

Our Pride: Jesus repeatedly says we must be poor in spirit. We must be broken of ourselves for his seed to nurture in us. Excessive focus on ourselves clutters our minds and leaves us in a series of unneeded mental repeats about how we are wronged. We all in some ways have a little bit of the great heroine Ester’s enemy Hamen in us. We build up towering gallows for all who don’t bow down to us only to be hung on it ourselves.

Pride keeps us from God because it puts ourselves above God. This is a life position we are not able to successfully live in.

Our Worry: We need to quit worrying. I am not sure that is completely possible in this life, but Jesus number one negative command is don’t fear. A lot of us are constantly playing over and over in our minds the concerns of the short term world. A prominent success guru once accurately said that if we are listening to what is in your head we are living in enemy territory. A whole lot of us are listening to the enemy of our souls more than we should, and we easily forget that God determines the end game.

Our Jealously: This is the last of the 10 commandments. It is a duzy of a command too. Most of us are good at failing at it.  From Cain and Abel, we instinctively rebel against God and say he is unfair and has cut someone else a better deal. And it’s true, some people have got a better deal then we do. And most likely, some have it worse. Mental health experts say jealously blinds you from happiness.  And even if we don’t logically get it. God says don’t do it. I rose from the dead. I created the world, and I I love you. Unless you know someone else who can do that, maybe you should trust me and not be that concerned about what I gave to someone else.

Love the task God has given us and not look around too much…Oh the peace and purpose that could bring.

All of these distractions are in one way or another driven by wrong focus. These are seeds sown by the enemy of our souls that are easily nurtured  and encouraged by our culture and our own selfishness. 

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.