What Defines You?

What are you focused on?

My hubby shared a video with me last weekend of a sermon in Alabama. It was from one of those megachurches. The pastor’s sermon was centered around the idea that whatever you spend most of your time focused on, eventually shapes who you are.

He used the example of football. If you spend every Friday night watching high school football and then all day every Saturday watching college football, and all day Sunday watching pro football, and then you watch Monday night football, your focus in life becomes football. It’s what you talk about. It’s what you think about. It defines you.

This idea intrigued me because this tendency to hyper-focus on one thing is so prevalent in our society. There are some people who are completely focused on their jobs. They go to work early and they stay late and when they are at home, they are connected with work via their smart phone. Work is what they talk about. It’s what they think about. What happens or doesn’t happen at work begins to define them.

There are people who are focused on their emotional pain. Maybe there was a divorce, or a betrayal, or a death. There’s certainly a time to grieve, but sometimes we can allow pain or anger to consume us. It’s what we talk about. It’s what we think about. We allow it to change who we are and redefine us.

There are even positive things like exercising that can become a problem. It’s good to keep our bodies strong and in good shape. How can we make a kingdom impact if we can’t gt off of the couch? Yet, if we begin each day thinking about our morning workout or spend our day planning an evening workout, or spend every weekend traveling out of town to some type of race, then our activity, whatever it is, has gone from a hobby to a definition of who we are. It’s all we talk about it’s all we think about.

I suspect that just about every human on the planet struggles with balance at one time or the other. But, we also have to remember that God made us for worship. We are made to worship Him and if we don’t put Him first, we will worship something else.

Maybe we should do a self-check over the next week or so and prayerfully ask God to show us what our focus is on and what it should be on. Perhaps we should monitor ourselves and our conversations. What are we talking about? What are we thinking about? Do we need to make some changes?

The fabulous thing about following Jesus is that He is always ready and willing to help us re-define ourselves. We only have to ask.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂