Maintaining Focus

I promised to share with you all my aspirations for this year. So here is one of them!

I want to maintain focus on what is truly important. 

Let me tell you what I mean by that: 

• What is truly most important is God. He comes before all else--family, friends, relationships, church school, job, self, etc. He deserves my affection and attention, and this year I will remember that He is first. That is not to say that the other things are not good things, it is just that God does not want competition in my life, and I will refuse to allow any of those things to be competition. (The people in the examples ought to want me to put God first, and they ought to understand why I do that. If they do not, then they should have a talk with Him about it--not me.) 
• Maintaining focus on God means totally surrendering my life to Him. (I am a saved Christian, but I am beginning to see total surrender in a different way.) For me, total surrender is realizing that He owns my life, so I am doing with it as He pleases rather than as I desire. Literally speaking, wherever He wants me to go and whatever He wants me to do, I will obey. That is what I want to give Him, because that is all I can give Him. He knows what is best for me, so I don't ever want to be somewhere that He is not. 
• In order to totally surrender my life to God, I must listen to what He tells me. That means a lot of time spent with Him, so I can recognize His voice when He calls me. Bible time daily, and a lot of prayer. Both of those ought to be important in the life of a Christian, because that is how He speaks to us and also how we speak to Him. I don't want to do this out of duty, but rather out of devotion. My faith is more about a relationship with God than about anything else. In order to have that relationship, I have to spend time with Him. It's that simple. (Something I would like to add: knowing the Bible is quite different than knowing it's Author. I don't want to just know the Bible--I want to have a close relationship with it's Author.)
• Knowing God and knowing what He wants me to do is one thing. But being a Christian and putting Him first means that I actually have to do what He is calling me to do! That isn't always easy, but I trust that He can handle everything we go through. I will follow His lead without question or debate, (to borrow some words from a friend of mine) because I have read Jonah and I don't want to be swallowed by a big fish. I know He has pretty big plans for me, so I intend to allow Him to work in my life. 

It is important to maintain focus, and I had recently forgotten how important that was. It was a painful reminder. This year, I am living in total surrender and I am going to focus on Him. That doesn't mean that I can't have fun or that I can't enjoy life, but I will remember Who I have to thank for that. I intend to follow wherever He leads me, happily and without question.