Small Steps

Success is the sum of small efforts - repeated day in and day out. (Robert Collier)

Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet;
stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil. (Proverbs 4:25-27)

I don't know about you, but my greatest 'downfalls' in life come whenever I get my eyes off of the path Jesus has laid out for me to follow. A 'fixed focus' is not as easy as some may seem, is it? There are lots and lots of distractions that can take our eyes off of that path and get us all twitterpated in the process. Whenever we get 'sidetracked', our attention has been purposefully directed away from the subject we are supposed to focus upon and toward another. It isn't accidental, as some may imagine, because there is a 'force' behind that distraction that is designed to attract our attention!

Purposeful 'redirection' of our path is one of Satan's very successful schemes. We need to be aware that God sets out a path, asks us to keep our eyes on him as we follow that path, but our enemy puts up all kinds of 'distractions' in order to draw our attentiveness away from God. In the past, we could see billboard after billboard along our highways. What was the purpose of the billboard? It was to draw us into the next township to get a cool drink, enjoy a luscious ice cream sundae, or rest our weary bones at a local hotel. The billboards were 'enticements' to turn away from the path we were on toward a 'slight detour' that would promise 'great delight'.

In much the same way, Satan's distractions seem quite 'innocent' at first. Keep in mind that he is not content with a momentary distraction of our attention. He wants us to get so 'off-track' that we don't even realize he has distracted us down a totally different path. As Collier reminds us, success is the sum of small efforts. If success is measured by the sum of small efforts, is failure measured in the sum of small steps off the path? Just askin...