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Bottomline: Where you focus your attention is where your soul will abide.

Bottomline: Prayer centers our attention on Jesus and Jesus changes everything.

What were you doing in 2007? Our attention span is dropping with each passing year. In 2000, before the digital revolution, it was twelve seconds, so it’s not exactly like we had a lot of wiggle room. But since then it’s dropped to eight seconds. To put things in perspective, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Did you know the average person now has a shorter attention span than a gold fish?

Our attention has been so consumed that since 2007 when the first iphone cam out the sale of chewing gum (thinking the impulse by while waiting in lines has declined by 15%) A recent study found that the average iPhone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times a day. That is just the average, another study on millennials but that at twice that number. ”The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'”Attention, he said, was fueled by “a little dopamine hit every once in a while,” in the form of a like or a comment, which would generate more content, in the forms of more likes and comments.“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Jesus said where your treasure is there your heart will be also…what if you treasure is more than money…maybe its our attention.

Our attention matters because what you consume will enviable consume you.

what you spend your time…consuming....watching, playing, reading, and listening to…will shape you and consume.

But can you guess how much time the average American spends on social media each year? The number is 705 hours. TV…2,737.5 hours.

“Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.” - John Ortberg

John Mark Comer wrote a book called the “Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” inspired by something Dallas Willard a great scholar once said to John Ortberg about needing to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Willard: “There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

Hurry and love are incompatible. All my worst moments as a father, a husband, and a pastor, even as a human being, are when I’m in a hurry—John Mark Comer

Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.

I believe that the devil is far more interested in distracting you then outright destroying you.

Prayer centers our attention on Jesus and Jesus changes everything.

now Prayer is basically us communication with God PRAY Pause: slowing and centering. Rejoice: adoration and thanksgiving. Ask: petition, intercession and perseverance. Yield: contemplation, listening, confession and spiritual warfare.

Pause-slowing and centering

New Living Translation Psalm 46

Be still, and know that I am God!

The New International Version Chapter 516 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

The New International Version Chapter 65 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8