DISTRACTIONS!

I’ve been hearing a lot about “seasons” from within various Christian circles lately.  And with everything new going on in my life lately, combined with the fact that the leaders of these Christian circles are highly respected individuals from a wide array of denominational backgrounds… I’m taking what I’m hearing very seriously! 

One of the definitions that Dictionary.com relegates to this word is: “a period of the year when something is best or available.”  But yet, I can think back on past “seasons” in my life, where things on the outside did not always seem to be presenting the best availability of life for me and my family.  Do you know what I’m talking about? 

Over the last six months since Piper’s homegoing, I have done a lot of thinking about when we really started to notice changes in my wife and then examine that beginning in relation to what was happening in our lives at the time.  I’ve mentioned before that in looking through the various notebooks that Piper always kept over the years, containing her Bible study notes, personal prayers, Church sermon or special service notes as well as her weekly grocery lists, that she had been quietly praying about her cognitive abilities since the early 2000’s.

When I look back at what was going on in our personal and family lives, I can see a “season” that was full of the stirrings of some radical changes that were to come in our lives.  I had been laid off from my 20-year stint of employment with HP and then their spin-off Agilent Technologies in 2001 when the electronics industry took a nose dive and most American firms began to shift their manufacturing divisions from the US to overseas.

From there I went to work for a professional photographer’s store in which I had done a lot of business with over the years and knew the manager.  Well, that lasted 2 years until the new owner finally shuttered the doors when the store experienced financial difficulties as the photo industry switched from film to the digital world.

Now, if that wasn’t enough, our church was experiencing some changes as well with a slightly declining congregation and a Pastoral change, not to mention a reduction in my monthly income from my position at the church in order to help with the reduced income.  On top of all that, our older daughter was getting married, I turned my side-business doing yard work into full time status and we also began to plan our upcoming move to Oklahoma and Bible School.

So yeah… life was a little busy for the Jim and Piper Berruto family… ya think?

The other thing about that time was that finances were a little thin as well!  But you know, throughout it all we did not allow everything that seemed to be turning upside down, the definite reduction in our checking account balance and all the new activity that we were pressed into service for, to captivate our focus.  Sure, we had to deal with the physical turn of events but we continued to focus in on God and the truth of His Word and not at how things looked in the natural.

As I look back today at that time, I can see that much of the parade of changes were simply DISTRACTIONS caused to dilute our focus from God’s plans and purposes.  The Oxford Online Dictionaries defines a DISTRACTION as “that which prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.”  We had a couple of very important tasks ahead of us at that time, mainly being our daughter’s wedding and then preparing to move 1800 miles away to attend Bible School.  Once the wedding was complete and we turned more of our attention to the move, we began to get some strong negative pressure against our obeying God’s call to Oklahoma.  I’m sure that Piper received much more of that pressure than I did and didn’t relate it to me as it mostly came from her side of the family.

But Piper was unflappable when it came to obeying the voice of the Lord in her life.  I’m sure that it just caused her to set her heart and determination more than ever toward obeying His will.  One result that Dictionary.com describes of the action of “DISTRACTION” is the “division or disorder caused by dissention or tumult.” I often think today though, if that pressure wasn’t there… if it would have allowed her more opportunity to hear from the Lord and talk with me about the changes that were beginning to cause her great frustration with her confusing and increasingly more prevalent dis-ability to finish her sentences and thoughts.  (Even with the results of a complete physical in 2006 which determined that all was fine with her???)

I’ve come to learn that DISTRACTION is a favorite tool of the enemy of our souls as he attempts to disrupt us from obeying the callings of God in our lives.  I see it very much trying to operate in my current situation as I am dealing with all the personal emotions and pain of losing the love of my life while trying to stay focused on preparing our house for sale and then another cross-country move, some 1200 miles to the Tulsa area in Oklahoma.  There are many, many things out there that vie for my attention, time and energy.  But there will be plenty of opportunities for all the other things… many very worthy… at a later date and place.

Proverbs 4:25 teaches us to “Keep your eyes straight ahead; ignore all sideshow distractions.”  And I think that this simple truth is one of the best pieces of information that all of us can learn.  If we had allowed all those DISTRACTIONS to hijack our attention back in the early 2000’s, we might never had gone to Oklahoma and received all the training, experiences and most of all… the saturation in the Word that put us over in the following years up to and including right now!

So, I encourage you to take a look around you and discover any and all of the various (and many times sneaky) DISTRACTIONS that may be trying to take your focus, attention and prayers away from where they really need to be!  The more focused we are on Him and His purposes, the better off we will be!

Have a wonderful new week, and as you do, say with me… “I am expecting to NOT be distracted by things that will keep me from focusing in on God’s will for my life!”