Keeping Your Eyes on the Road Ahead

Our sermon today at Valley Creek Church had us listening to a guest speaker- one of our elders Don Manning.  His sermon had some great applications and refreshing insight to me as a father, husband and bread winner.  Several points stuck out but one resonated with profound clarity to me:

Keeping your eyes on the Lord!  We daily lose sight of God working in our lives and rush from one moment to the next, stuck in the past, worried about the future and losing sight of the here and now. Can you identify with that? I sure can!

I remember instantly thinking about the parallels between what he said and every day life. Rare is a day in which I drive to work and not see a traffic accident or a near miss.  We travel with it all the time- we see someone tailgating us or the cars near us, texting on the phone, eating, doing makeup, shooting across several lanes at once to make an exit, you get the idea. As a result, WE have to look out for them and make concessions lest we get a chance to meet them in person.

It struck me this morning (pardon the pun) how we take our eyes off Jesus and start looking at life by only what is directly in front of us; the exact same way so many people drive today. This is a reactive lifestyle and with the pace of life faster than ever it is even more vital for us to slow down and be more deliberate in our lives.

I remember a time in the 70's and 80's in which a third brake light was not on the back of cars, but legislators thought it prudent to create a law to help us avoid accidents by mandating that light be installed in all passenger vehicles. Would it not have been a better idea to teach us how to drive properly? By that I mean to look 20-30 seconds ahead of the vehicle in front of us. I learned this trick in a professional driving course years ago and an amazing thing happened when I did: I could not only see much further ahead but my periphery also increased. In other words, by simply changing my point of focus, much more came into clarity and I was better able to avoid an accident.

While we think we see a lot, from God's perspective our view is like   looking at the world between our hands like this image shows.

I always scratched my head at how the Israelites could not remember one day to the next the miracles God gave them to escape Egypt and be delivered from slavery. Of course they didn't have the benefit of the Holy Spirit to stay with them but I also miss how I forget every day what He has done for me and my family when I worry about something or don't pray for guidance. I am in effect, staring at the bumper of the car in front of me while I am traveling through life at a high rate of speed. (I touched on the importance of timing in your life in my January 27 article when I write about Jesus' never being in a hurry). Day by day I strive to change my focus onto God.

When we put our eyes on God literally and figuratively, we will as a result gain the vision our loving Father has for us minimizing any distractions, but we also can see rising distractions exactly as they are and be fully prepared to address or dismiss them as appropriate. This will permit us to live in the moment, leave the past in the past and welcome the future gracefully and never in a hurry, and allow us to smell the roses.