Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]… – Hebrews 12:2, Amplified Bible (AMP)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I heard a story about a trapeze artist who was famous for conducting his act without a safety net. For years, he and his team wowed audiences with their death-defying feats, but one day, fate caught up to him, and he fell off of the trapeze to his death.

Not long after his death, one of his colleagues disclosed that, for weeks prior to the fall, the deceased had been suffering from visions of falling off of the trapeze. Instead of keeping his mind focused on completing the trapeze act successfully, he began to slide into a mental pattern of failure, which eventually played out in real life. By shifting his mental focus from success to failure, his life followed suit.

The same thing happens every time we take our mental focus off of God and place it somewhere else. When we look away from Jesus towards other things, we lose our access to our Hope, to our Provision, to our Strength, and to our Faith. When we are cut off from the Source of our faith, we dry up like a stream cut off from its source of water. Such a stream becomes a useless ditch bereft (robbed) of its beauty, its purpose, and its ability to refresh others. Likewise, we are robbed of our spiritual attractiveness, our God-given purpose, and our ability to refresh others with the Light when we allow the cares of this world, the deceitfulness or riches, lust, and pride to win our attention away from the One who gives us meaning and purpose.

When we detect our gaze being pulled away from the Savior, we should stop what we are doing, pray to The Lord to pull our gaze back towards Him, and follow up our prayer with a conscientious decision to stop looking at the distractions. Only when we develop the habit of keeping our eyes on Jesus will we experience consistent victory in our Christian lives.

Shop hundreds of Christian-themed products at our new store! A portion of each purchase goes to support the work of Today’s Quote From God. To visit the Today’s Quote From God Store, please click here.