What's the focus?

My book, "THE GOD FOCUSED LIFE" just came out this week I had a meeting about church related items with a representative from a local Christian bookstore today so I took a copy with me to show him. As we discussed the topic of the book I pointed out that the book addresses often unrealized cultural barriers to loving and pursuing God. That seemed like a good topic to talk about in today's blog. I explained that one of the things that marks most of the devotionals produced in America is a basic pattern. The books typically ask us to summarize the passage being addressed or they summarize it in some unique manner. Then most books ask what does this mean for you or how does this apply to your life. While this is not necessarily a bad question it is the focus of the question that creates a problem for us. You see in this scenario God becomes a means to an end, and the end is us. To look at it another way think about the last movie you went to see or perhaps the last book you read or music you bought. Did any of those things happen because someone you know and like suggested them to you? Most of us are dramatically affected by relationships. We find our decisions influenced by those who are close to us. Similarly a relationship with God that is focused on God will have a dramatic impact on what movies we see, what books we read and what music we listen to. Why? Because a relationship with God will be helping us to know God better. If you ever received a letter from someone that you love you probably did not read it to figure out how it applied to your life. You read it to know the other person better. If they mentioned something that happened that caused them pain you would instantly make note of it. Applying something like that to your life about someone you love is automatic. The reason that I think this is a much needed topic and a really big deal is that the church by a large number shows a great disregard for the things that God does not like. The common catch phrase is that we live under grace. Indeed we do. But if we really loved God would we want to selfishly do whatever we wanted? If we cared about the relationship with Him would we treat His desires with such a high degree of disregard? Doesn't Jesus call us to die to self? As for me and my family we will seek to live a life focused on loving and pursuing God.

Having family devotions that matter

Over the years I have always been struck by the well meaning people that set out to give us some tips or ideas on having family devotions. They end up talking about how to engage your kids or encourage you to get them involved in acting out the story or whatever it is that they do. There are two things that it seems to me are critically important about family devotions.

1. Have them!
2. Use the time to point your children to God

Often the reason that most people do not have them is because it seems so complicated and takes time to do it right. What happens is the well meaning folks who try to encourage us to engage our kids end up discouraging us from doing it because it seems to take too much time. There also seems to be a great deal of inertia to overcome. This is usually imposed by our favorite TV program. I am not going to sit here and tell you TV is evil. (It is a box with electrical components in it. It can't be good or evil.) The content you choose to watch may be good or bad but that is a different subject. The big issue I see with TV is that it consumes our time. I can promise you when you enter eternity if you never watched TV you will not be standing before the King of kings thinking I wish I wouldn't have missed that episode of (insert show here).  But I can guarantee you that if there are any regrets (I don't know if there will be) they will be about time not spent advancing the kingdom of God in the hearts of others including our children. So turn off the TV and keep it simple.
For our very young children we read them a story out of a Bible story book. Then after putting them in bed we look up the equivalent passage from the Bible story book in our Bibles. We read this together with our older children and teens and then I ask them what they see here about God or what are they reminded of about God. I want my children to know God and so I try to constantly put before them a picture of God in one form or another. We usually follow our scripture reading with a story of a great Christian from the past or a book written by a Christian pointing to the greatness of God in some way. I want to stress that I do NO preparation for this. We sit down together and read and end in prayer. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” It seems to me that the way we want our children to go is to God and eternity in heaven. It then follows that I need to train them to orient their lives around God. We simply seek to help them to develop a God focused life.

Demystifying devotions

This is one of those things that has been so subtly under-minded by our culture that it is both shocking and eye-opening when Christians see it in the light of scripture. Why? Most all of the devotional materials you will find in the Christian marketplace are formed around a basic pattern. It goes something like this:

• Look at a passage
• Summarize it or restate it in an interesting or engaging manner 
• Talk about or write about a really great way that you can apply that passage to your life

This is the basic pattern found in 95% to 98% of the devotional materials out there. No one questions it and so it continues. In Matthew 22:35-40 Jesus answers a lawyer's question about the greatest commandment. Jesus' answer is instructive for us when we think about approaching scripture. But first let's think about people that we love and letters that we get from them. When you read a letter from someone you love you don't try and come up with some great way that you can apply that letter to your life. You read the letter to know the person that you love better. The person you love may express hurt or concern about something and you will immediately apply that to your life without even making any effort to do so. You see if you love someone you don't want to hurt them. You want to please them because it makes you happy to bring pleasure to the person you love. Back to Jesus' comments. He said in this passage that to love the Lord your God was the greatest commandment. Applying scripture to my life is not so much about loving God as it is loving myself. Granted we are seeking to grow and may even achieve a certain level of growth using this method, but the ultimate growth pattern we long for will elude us. We will develop far more quickly and far more richly in our relationship with God through devotions if our focus is on Him. In the previous example God becomes a means to an end and the end is us. Devotions that are God focused will look something like this.

• Summarize the passage (This is something I do to boost my attention while I am reading)
• Write down what you are reminded of about God or see about God

Try it! Even the begats start to hold real meaning when our goal is to see how they reveal God to us and not how they apply to our lives.