Get Your Focus Right (FCA)

Illustration

Have a few people look at each of the zoomed in or zoomed out pictures and try and guess what they are.

Bible, hand sanitizer, bobble head, crayon.

What made it so hard to make out what you were looking at?

Perspective: You were either way too close or too far away.

If you change your perspective, things come into focus.

What do you tend to focus on?

There are two perspectives that cause you as teenagers a lot of anxiety and worry.

Focusing on the “RIGHT NOW” way too much.

Focusing on the “FUTURE” way too much.

Making NOW bigger that it really is.

Most, if not all, of you are under 18. No doubt some of you have faced some really difficult challenges in life in the years you have been alive (don’t want to make light of that).

But for the overwhelming majority of you, you have literally only lived a 1/4 (25%) of your life.

75% of your life is ahead of you, and the majority of what is behind you was just spent growing and developing.

Why does this matter?

Because there are things going on in your life now that seem like HUGE, INSURMOUNTABLE struggles that you may never overcome.

Again, I am not trying to downplay your struggles, but when the current situations we are in the middle of become the primary focus of our attention and emotional energy, they become like the picture of the sanitizer bottle, to big for us to see what they even are.

Whether is it a relationship that you are struggling in, a class that is overwhelming, a family issue that is taxing you, or just the struggles of being a teenager in our culture, there is a struggle to see around your struggles when they are SO big.

Likewise

Some of you are so fixated on the future that you are putting all kinds of energy and effort into creating your future that you are wearing yourself ragged here and now.

You feel an overwhelming obligation to excel in all your classes so that you can get scholarships, go to a good school, graduate with honors, get a great job, and have all the things the American Dream offers.

Some of you are fixated in finding your soulmate. I have talked to so many teens and young adults who are struggling because there BF/GF broke up with them and they are so worried they will never find a mate.

Less than 2% of high school relationships lead to marriage.

That means the likelihood of you finding a mate in high school is slim to none. Yet it dominates some of your thoughts to the point of emotional break down.

Don’t Worry About Tomorrow

Matthew 6:25–34 CSB

25 “Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? 27 Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? 28 And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. 30 If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith? 31 So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. 34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Here is the thing about worry, it is our way of trying to control things that are out of our control.

That is Jesus’s message here: Stop trying to control things that you can’t control and trust the one who is actually in control.

Jesus is not saying for us to sit on our hands and wait for Him to give us everything.

We are to work, to move, to make decisions, and pursue paths, all with the confidence and faith in God that He is working all things according to His plans and purposes.

Jesus uses birds as an illustration.

Birds don’t worry and fret, because God provides for them.

They still go out and gather and pillage, but they don’t worry like we do.

There is a confident assurance in the loving, faithful character of God.

Don’t worry about tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean not to plan, not to work hard, and definitely not to pray.

But don’t let tomorrow OR today become so big they overwhelm you.

You are so much more valuable to God than the birds.