So, how do you go about “Fixing the Focus of Your Faith?” Answer: By turning your faith around and pointing it in the right direction. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way “fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith...” You’ve got to get your eyes off of others, off yourself – your problems, your pet peeves, your personal preferences and put your focus and faith on Jesus. You must fix your gaze upon Him, see Him, listen to His voice, receive revelation from the Holy Spirit concerning His desire, know what He desires, what He’s designed, know the direction He wants us to go as a people of God gathered together under Christ’s lordship. Jesus is not only the author, object, initiator and beginner of our faith, but He is the perfecter, completer, the source and the end of our faith. The way we go about fixing our focus has to do with where we place the focus of our faith.
Now what’s interesting is that everyone has faith. For example, a person who won’t walk under a ladder has faith in superstition. Anyone who goes to bed at night expecting to wake up in the morning has faith, even if the faith is simply that the world will still be turning on its axis the next morning. Even atheists have faith. If you look at the life of the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the renowned atheist, you’ll find that she exercised great faith that God doesn’t exist. Religious people of course have faith, because faith is an important element of every religious system whether it’s Buddhism, Zen, Islam or Judaism.
So, lack of faith isn’t the real problem for most of us. Nor is the amount of faith what’s important in fixing our focus. Jesus told His followers that anyone who simply had the faith of a small mustard seed could move a mountain. So, if it isn’t the absence of faith nor the amount of faith that matters, just what is it about faith that really makes the difference? In a negative sense, what makes the difference is:
I. The Fatal Shift of Your Faith
If the object of your faith isn’t Jesus Christ, then you’ve shifted your faith and focused on a lesser object. Many people make foolish choices as to the object of their faith. Just look around you and pay attention to the various objects of faith in which people are willing to trust. Not too many years ago, a group of people put their faith in a quote – “religion” that promised a spaceship would soon arrive and take them back to the mother planet. The result was a mass suicide similar to that of Jonestown, another sad story where people were led astray and convinced to put their faith in the words of a man.
Even Christians who should know better, can be swept up into movements that serve as substitutes for true faith. One area where this is happening today is in politics. Some earnest, well-meaning Christians believe the solution to the world’s problems is to elect all Christians into office but obviously, they’ve never been to a church business meeting. The object of their faith is to have their man in power, a man with high credentials and experience whom they think will solve the problems of this country. Now, there’s nothing wrong with our political leaders being Christians IF – they’re living in a trust relationship with Christ, but they should never be the object of our faith. The object of our faith should never be man or the movement of the hour.
Another fatal shift people make with the object of their faith is faith itself. It’s faith in faith. They view faith as a power by which they can gain success, wealth and health. Sadly, some Christians who aren’t rooted in the truth of the Word of God even shift their faith to activities, to accomplishments, to doing – on to faith in man’s approval of their activities and efforts or to faith in what people think of them. But the value of faith is found in the object of your faith, not in faith itself. That’s the real difference in fixing your focus. So in a positive sense what makes the difference is:
II. The Focus of Your Faith
The correct solution for “Fixing our Focus” is this: go back to step one and turn your faith back to the Son of God, to the One whom God has provided as the source for ALL of our needs. As Peter said, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” (2 Peter 1:3-4). Jesus Christ by His own words has identified Himself as the source and fulfillment for all our needs as He said to John in Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” the first and the last, the beginning and the end” and everything in between. “Christ is all in all” Paul said in Colossians 3:11.
In fact, it was the Colossians who had it right when it came to the focus of their faith. The Galatians you’ll remember, had shifted their faith back to their previous way of life. Paul said in Galatians 1:6, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel.” Then he wrote in 3:1-4, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you …? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” You see, they were rooted in legalism and after Paul left, they fell back to self-effort, trying to perfect themselves. In contrast, Paul commended the Colossian church for their walk of faith. He wrote to them in 1:3-4, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus . . .” Note that Paul isn’t commending them for their faith, but for their “faith in Christ Jesus.” It was the focus of their faith that Paul stressed.
You see, faith always has an object. And the value of a person’s faith is directly related to the value of the object of their faith. Faith focused solely on Christ as its object will bring happiness, security and fruitfulness. Faith in anything less is misplaced and will lead to the fruit of error: frustration, stagnation, bondage and struggle. For example, someone may say, “Swallowing enables you to live,” and that sounds reasonable at first. But, you can also swallow and die, if what you swallow is poison. So, it’s not the act of swallowing that enables you to live, but swallowing food that enables you to live. You can swallow poison and die using the identical mechanism that you use to swallow food to live!
In the same way, faith doesn’t save us. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ saves us! The focus of our faith is directed to the One who claimed to be “the way, the truth and the life.” When Christ is the object of our faith, we also have truth as the object of our faith. The result is that truth sets us free and keeps us free from slavery and bondage to erroneous thinking and actions. When our faith shifts away from the truth, guess where it shifts to? ERROR! And what does error do? It puts us back in bondage. As human beings, we’re prone to the shifting of our faith with little temptation or provoking. It’s our nature to “lean on our own understanding.”
So, when we find ourselves in the need of fixing our focus, go back to step one and turn your faith back to the Son of God, to the One whom God has provided as the source for all our needs as individuals, as families and as a church. As we place our total being on Him and on Him alone, we’ll experience a faith that has roots. As Paul said to the Colossians in 2:6-7, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught.” That’s the kind of faith that will fix your focus and bring joy, peace, healing and rest in the abundant life Christ provides. And that kind of faith will provide the revelation of God’s desire, design and direction for His Church.
In what way do you need to focus your faith today? There’s no one in this world more worthy of your faith than Jesus – would you trust Him as your Savior and Lord and Life today? There’s nothing that compares to knowing Jesus by faith either – would you trust Him with whatever problem, trouble, difficulty, decision or need you have today?
(This message was inspired out of a study of the book “Faith That Pleases God” by Bob George and some of the content came from that source pages 48-51.)
