Tripping 101

If I keep my eyes on God, I won’t trip over my own feet. (Psalm 24:15)

I don't know about you, but my 'feet' get in the way a lot! I seem to 'trip up' over some things others see coming a mile away. Sin is just like that for most of us - others can see it coming, while we are standing there totally oblivious to its soon coming attack! Why do we get our eyes off of God so easily and find ourselves looking in places for our help? I think it is because we have so many 'influential voices' in our world today - we just lose focus and don't even know we are allowing it to happen. It is as though our society has created the perfect environment for 'passivity'. God never wanted 'passive followers' - he wants followers who will keep paying attention, regardless of the circumstances.

If I keep my eyes on God... That pretty much says it all right there. We must maintain our focus - God doesn't do that for us. We must train our eyes to 'retain focus', not just stare blindly in any old direction. As I was training in the military, we'd go out to the shooting range. On this range, the targets started out 'stationary' so we could learn to 'zero in' our rifles and get used to firing them. In rather short order, we were placed on ranges with 'moving targets', popping up here and there all over the range, making it necessary to focus on the entire range, not just a stationary piece of paper a few hundred feet away. Those targets would pop up, requiring us to direct our focus, aim, and fire. Your overall score was based on how well you recognized the target. We didn't have to always hit the center of it, but we did need to hit it!

God might just be interested in training us to recognize him wherever he is and in whatever he is doing. We want a 'stationary target' in life, but God's actions in and around us are seldom 'stationary'. He is a creative God, even a 'recreative' God. As he goes about his work in us, he expects us to maintain focus. We may not always hit the target dead center, but when our focus is attentive, we see the target and our aim is adjusted so we hit it! God knows there will be lots of distractions in the 'range', but he wants us to recognize the target and aim for it. Aim requires attentiveness. Perhaps we trip up so often because we aren't as attentive as we need to be to his voice, his prompts, and his Word. Just sayin!