Many times we’re given a task or a goal by God but we get distracted along the way.
In today’s Godly Gain segment, we discuss about how we can fix our eyes on our goals and wade through distractions.
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Focus on Your Goal
CJ: Hey there guys. Welcome to another week of Godly Gain. We are going to talk about fixing our eyes on a goal and wading through a sea of distractions.
SHELLEY: We are here in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and welcome again to this edition of Godly Gain.
CJ: So yesterday Shelley and I had the opportunity to join some friends of ours in Ohio. Our friends were visiting here and wanted to do a 14er; a 14 thousand foot mountain in Colorado.
SHELLEY: Yes, very high.
CJ: We decided to do Mount Albert, which is the highest one in all of Colorado. It’s not the most difficult, but it still offers some strenuous effort to get to the top.
SHELLEY: I was straining for sure, because I’m out of shape.
CJ: Every one of these 14ers that we’ve done always require a lot of effort. There is no easy 14er. They all give you a run for your money.
Between the oxygen deprivation and the elevation gain, you’re going to work to get to the summit, and there can be a lot of distractions along the way. We deal with internal distractions, things like fatigue and mental things that challenge us and oftentimes, we’re tempted just to stop and turn around.
One of the things I noticed yesterday on the trail was a series of dogs that people brought along. Those dogs just love getting outside and enjoying the fresh air; they make it look so easy on the trail.
SHELLEY: Some of them were putting me to shame.
CJ: Then I noticed one dog in particular that was constantly running off the trail and running down the mountain side chasing either a bird, a chipmunk, or quite possibly hearing the sounds of marmots, which are little animals that live in higher altitude like these mountains. I noticed this dog continually going back and forth, and it would come back to the trail just panting. You could tell it was getting a workout.
It reminded me of how we sometimes go off the trail. Many times we’re given a task or a goal, and hopefully we’ve been given this goal by the Lord.
As we do this, sometimes we get bright shiny object syndrome, which can occur with anything. You look around and notice this bright and shiny object that gets your attention and you start navigating toward that and lose sight of the main thing that was put in our heart to set out and achieve.
It’s so easy to take our eyes off that trail, off that path and begin looking elsewhere. In the meantime that main thing that God has given us gets undone and it continues to go undone.
SHELLEY: We work primarily with authors, speakers, or entrepreneurs and I see a lot of authors struggling with this. It’s one of the biggest things inside Author Audience Academy that I’m talking about constantly with my members and one-on-one clients; staying focused.
There are times where, it’s good to adapt and try something new, but it’s really important to stay focused. So that’s why we wanted to touch on this now.
CJ: There are a couple of scriptures I’m going to read, but I’ll close with one of them, and this will be sort of our focus scripture. It comes from Hebrews 12:1-2, and it’s probably one of my favorite passages, specifically because I’m a runner. I can sort of relate to the word endurance. Endurance is the ability to withstand pain; that’s what that word means.
SHELLEY: I was feeling that yesterday, coming down from the mountain.
CJ: Yeah. So, in the running world we get more and more fit. That means we can withstand more and more pain, and strenuous activity. You adapt and become more fit overtime.
Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
It’s important to choose wisely what you put in your pack. You obviously want hydration – water, sports drink – whatever that may be. Then you want to have your snacks. But no one in their right mind, unless they’re trying to torture themselves, would stuff their packs with a whole bunch of extra rocks.
That would be crazy. You would be adding to your load, your work effort, and it would really defeat the purpose. You want to reach that summit with the least amount of energy as possible.
Now, for some of us, that’s going to be a lot of energy either way, but you’d be crazy to add extra weight to your pack.
So here it says, “let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.”
I think about sin when it comes to a distraction. Have you ever had a pebble caught in your shoe?
At first you think it’s no big deal, you can take care of it. But over time that pebble becomes like a boulder inside your shoe. You just have to pull off the side of the trail to take off your shoe and get that pebble out of there, because it can create a blister that really hinders your progress later on in the hike. A sin can start small but it can become a distraction. Then it slowly becomes this bigger thing unless it’s dealt with early.
Hebrews 12:2
We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.
Our goal yesterday was to hit that summit no matter what. I was hiking with one of our friends named John, and John wasn’t fit enough for the hike, just going to be honest there.
There were times when we had to stop and John just had to sit down for a while. But you know what? John made it to the top. He did what he needed to although it wasn’t easy.
– There was some doubt along the way
– There were those mental challenges
– And there were points where he said, “CJ you just go on ahead, let the others know I’ll be along eventually.”
I knew however that the last one wasn’t the best idea because sometimes we need a companion; someone that pushes us along the way.
So that’s why I wanted to stay with John, and he made it!
SHELLEY: We were cheering him on when he got to the top.
CJ: Yeah. But that focus on the summit was our goal. We weren’t going to go off trail and do some gallivanting along the valley below and then eventually come back to the trail.
No, we had to stay focused on that goal of reaching that summit and doing it by the quickest route possible, which was staying on the heavily trafficked trail.
That’s just one illustration of how so often we can get distracted in the goals and tasks that God has put on our hearts.
That book that you have doesn’t seem to be getting done because you’re veering off the trail so often.
That business idea that God has given you could possibly bless a whole lot of people around the world with the funds it generates. But you have not gotten over the hump of staying focused and continuing forward yet to make that happen.
That ministry that God has put on your heart and you say, “Well, eventually I’ll get to it, but this over here seems a lot more fun at the moment.”
Again, it’s so easy to find excuses or reasons to put that thing off, instead of keeping that thing the main focus.
SHELLEY: So I want to ask you these today and I want you to think about this for a minute;
What is distracting you in finishing that book, that product, or whatever it is that’s your main focus?
What is your distraction right now?
Yesterday when we were hiking on that 14er, my legs were shaking so bad when I was getting down to the bottom, because it’s like having brakes all the time. My husband is very athletic so he had no problems. But I literally fell. I slipped and my quads were so tired that I tripped and fell.
I didn’t get hurt, thank goodness, but I wanted to give up. I was in pain and I was so tired.
There may be moments when you’re writing your book, going through the publishing process, marketing, building your platform, setting up landing pages, and when you’re doing all the things I teach you inside Author Audience Academy and you may just think “This is too hard, this is too painful! I just can’t do it!”
What is that obstacle right now in front of you?
I want you to think about what CJ read in Hebrews 12:1-2. Focus your eyes on Jesus tonight, and not on the pain, on the obstacles, or on the distractions. Fix your eyes back on Him and ask Him for help.
CJ: I think something else that helps me as well is sometimes I envision that goal completed already.
I see that summit. In your case, envision that your book is finished, completed, there are people reading your book, and they are growing, being impacted, and being encouraged by your book.
It could be something else that God has put on your heart and you’re seeing the fruit already in that vision.
Sometimes if I’m training hard for a race, I’m envisioning that result. If I’ve set a goal for myself of say, top 10, I’m envisioning myself crossing that line in the top 10; doing what I need to do to reach that goal.
It helps to envision and put skin to that goal that you have.
So I want to encourage you to do that and be able to have those moments where you do see it come to fruition; even if it’s not finished yet. You’re seeing it in your mind. You’re seeing that potential carried out as the Lord would have it.
SHELLEY: I saw some power in that this year, when I combined visualization with prayer.
In your prayer time, I was visualizing, praying, and asking God for direction, wisdom, and the next steps towards that goal. I did that earlier. I shared in a previous training for the writing workshop we did at our church.
I saw the very room I knew we were going to be in, filled with people, and they were people who needed what we were sharing. And God had put books on their hearts.
I was visualizing that and God gave me two very specific things to do to promote that event. That day came and the room was filled, and when I started walking around before we got started, I asked people about what brought them there. I get chills just thinking about it, but almost everyone said that “God has put a book on my heart and I know I’m supposed to write this book.”
It was the very thing we prayed for; the very thing that God had given to me to pray for and visualize. It is so powerful when you combine those two things.
CJ: Let me close this with another verse that comes from Proverbs along the same line of thinking as the passage we read in Hebrews.
Proverbs 4:25
Look straight ahead,
and fix your eyes on what lies before you.
What that tells me is that there is a goal ahead. We should not look off to the right or the left—as that dog I saw yesterday easily captivated by anything off the trail and making a lot of extra work for himself.
Keeping focus on that goal, on that summit, visualizing and fixing those eyes on that goal is what we need to do.
As you’re partnering with the Lord, constantly bring that before Him and say, “Lord I know you put this on my heart. Now I need your help to wade through those distractions, and to really keep my eyes fixed and focused on that so that I can complete the task You’ve given me.”
As we do that, we will see that He has other summits to conquer, other goals in mind that He wants to use you for.
Many times, God probably won’t be giving you a whole lot of other things until you’re faithful to carry out the task that He has put in your heart now.
I have seen this and learned the hard way many times, because I’m a person, admittedly so, that gets distracted. I don’t know if I was ever diagnosed with ADD or anything like that but I always needed the directions told to me a couple of times when I was growing up because I easily get distracted.
It was carried through in a lot of other areas in my life where I see something bright and shiny and I’m like, “Oh that looks like so much fun, I want to try that,” while the whole time this other thing goes unfulfilled.
So I want to encourage you with that. Let us fix our eyes ahead, and namely on Jesus. As we do that He is going to allow us to complete what it is before us.
SHELLEY: Being finishers. That’s what I say in Author Audience Academy a lot. I want you to be a finisher and to cross that finish line.
If you are an Author Audience Academy member, I have a training called PlanIt Day. It helps you set a 90 day breakthrough goal; that big goal that you should focus on, that summit goal that leads you through times of prayer and seeking God on what that should be. So that is there for you.
If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to join our free Facebook group GodlyGain.com. It’s for Christian authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ the center and to not be distracted by all these other things and to keep their focus on Christ, just as Hebrews 12:1-2 says.
We want to pray over you, that God would give you clarity, help you stay focused and help you stay on the path that He has for you.
CJ: Lord, we thank you so much for what you’re doing in each of our lives. Lord you have put things upon our hearts and our minds that you want us to accomplish. You have even given us the visualization to see those things completed; to see them blessing other people for your glory, seeing people brought closer to Jesus as a result of something that you have put on our heart to do. Lord I pray for each person here, that you would spur something in their hearts to continue pursuing that goal, to reach that summit, whatever it may be. I pray that you would give them vision, clarity, and focus to be able to do what you’ve called them to do. I pray that they would be able to wade through all the distractions, even the temptations from the enemy as we know that those aren’t going away. Lord we just pray that you would show us the way of escape for each one of those temptations and that as we go through life we would use our time wisely and make the most of it. We thank you for those summits ahead that each of us is going to conquer in Jesus’ name. We do pray all this in Jesus’ wonderful name. Amen.
SHELLEY. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining us, and until next time.
CJ: God bless you guys.
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