daily Broadcast

Understanding the Power of Focus, Part 1

From the series Living Above Your Circumstances

If you’re bummed out, struggling, things not going well, and you don’t know where to go, join Chip as he begins this series and shares how three little letters can change your world.

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Message Transcript

Is this glass half empty, or is it half full?  And the answer is, yes, it is half empty, and yes, it is half full.

And life’s a lot like that.  But how you choose to look at it makes all the difference, because you can’t change your circumstances.  But you can either choose to focus on, You know what?  This is what I’ve got, and I can drink that.  That’s going to help me.  Or, You know what?  This is what I don’t have.

And you can spend all your life focusing on what you don’t have.  And when you focus on the half empty, it will produce a set of emotions, and it will spiral relationships, and it will produce the kind of person that you would not want to be around, even if it’s you.  And if you focus on what’s half full, and what God is doing, and what He has done, and what He has given you, and what He is about, it produces a different kind of person, with a different set of emotions.  And instead of spiraling, it will do something very significant in your life, even if the half empty is very painful.

And so, we’re going to talk about, how do you live a life – the power of perspective – how do you live a life where you can train yourself, and by the Spirit of God and the grace of God, not to play mental games, but to recognize that life is filled with ups and downs and difficulties in a fallen world, and you can choose to learn to look at the half full.  You can look at the half full in your marriage.  You can look at the half full of your finances.  You can look at the half full of the struggles with some of your kids.  You can look at the half full that the job that you do have.  You can look at the half full of the health problems you don’t have, even though some of the ones you do have are a struggle.  And then we’re going to talk about how that works, and the impact that it makes.

“The Tale of Two Fires.”  This is a personal friend; it’s a personal story.  It is one of the most incredible stories that you’ll ever hear, and it sounds so much like it fits the illustration, what I want to talk about, you will assume I made this up.  I didn’t.  It’s true.

This friend, I got to know –He’s a guy that was not really walking with the Lord, was not going to church, was not in the Scriptures, prayed some, cared about his wife – a good, decent, moral guy, but not really walking with God.

But man, I’ll tell you what, he was an entrepreneur, and he could flat out make money.  He’s one of the best sales people I’ve ever seen.  And he developed his own little company; he was a master cabinet builder.  And he got some contracts with these really high-end houses, and he built cabinets for them for tens of thousands of dollars.  And he became a pretty wealthy guy, with a lot going for him.

And then, he got a phone call – and I still remember, because I was pulling out of my driveway, and he lived near me.  And as I was on my way to church on a Sunday morning, his wife came out, waving like this, in a bathrobe, and she gave me a little message, and they found out, that morning, that someone had arsoned his company, and everything was burned to the ground.  Everything he owned was in ashes.  He had zero insurance.  Everything he owned.  He lost a half million dollars in that fire, just in material.  And all the equipment to build all of the cabinets.  And he went in the tank.  He got clinically depressed.

Eventually, he had to go to the doctor.  Could not come out of it.  Life was bad.  Everything fell apart.

Eventually, over time, he started to rebound.  He had a number of carpenters that worked for him.  They all scattered. You know what?  The guy’s an entrepreneur.  Three and a half years later, he’s rebuilt the company.  He’s got a better contract on another set of high end houses.  He has now made a lot of money, yet again.

This time – this is a true story – this time, he developed a new team, and there was a guy that decided, on Saturday, he wanted to help the boss.  So, he went in to the cabinet and thought he would clean up a little bit, and he was sweeping all the sawdust.  And when he got done sweeping all the sawdust, there was – you know one of the things that you weld with?  And he decided that he would get that cleaned out, so he lit that thing, and wanted to get it cleaned out and the tanks, and it caught some sawdust.  In a matter of minutes, everything he owned, again, was in ashes.  I mean – now, he had a little bit of insurance.

Round number one, his focus was completely inward.  But God got his attention.  Through that process, he began to think, You know, maybe there’s more to life than cabinets.  Maybe there’s more to life than money.  Maybe there’s more to life than great vacations.  Maybe there’s more to life than skiing in Vail.  And, over that time, he began to get back in the Scriptures again.

This time, within 24 hours – because he was looking not at the glass half empty, but he looked at the glass half full.  He lost another half million dollars.  Within 48 hours, he had a job for every one of his employees, with his competitors.  Within 24 hours, he had not only come out of his clinical depression that he was headed for, but he actually had a positive attitude.

And he ended up coming over to our house, he and his wife, and they told us this whole story.  And I said, “Man, what in – what happened?”  And he said, “I’ll tell you what happened.”  He said, “I’ve been down this road before.  And I understood what things can bring, and I understood what things can’t bring.”  And then, he told me this.  He said, “A sheer act of the will, this is what I did.  I don’t know why, but when I got the news, I told my wife.  She was stunned and burst into tears.”  And he said, “There was a little window of time,” and he said, “I’m going to to get a chance, round two, to do this better than last time.”  And he said, “Honey” – he called her name, and he said, “I’m going to to take a little walk.”

And he said, “I walked out the door; I went down the steps.”  And he said, “I don’t know why, but this came to my mind: The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Naked I came into the earth, and naked will I return.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  And he said, “All my emotions were raging, and what I lost, and my money, and what I’m going to do, and then, all I thought about is how down I got, and where I went before.”  And he said, “I walked around the block.  I said, ‘Thank You, God, that You’re in control.  It doesn’t feel like it.  Thank You that You love me.  Thank You that Christ died for me.’”

And he said, “For about a half hour or 40 minutes, I did nothing but willfully choose to thank God and to praise God and to thank God and to praise God for what I did have: ‘Thank You that I have a wife that has stood by me.  Thank You for my employees, that the guy was trying to help me.’”  And he said, “I mean to tell you, the exact same thing happened, and my response to it was a 180.”

And you know, I have to tell you now that the guy does have the Midas touch.  His business is going great.  He actually was a testimony this time, instead of a disgrace to the Gospel.  People ask, “What’s going on with you?”  He said, “I think God’s in control.”  He said, “I think God can cause things to burn down, but I think He can cause to build them back up.  I’m just going to trust God through this.”

My question for you, as we start this series, if I could take a whiteboard up here, and I could give you a marker, and you could write on that whiteboard the most significant difficulty in your life right now, what would you write on the board?  Would you write the word marriage?  Would you put a big money sign?  Would you write depression?  Would you write midlife?  Would you write lack of significance?

If you could come up and write on the board, “This is the number one most pressing, painful difficulty I’m dealing with in my life,” what would you write?  Because what I want you to do is, I want you to get that clear in your mind before we start the teaching time, because what the Spirit of God, I pray, will do this morning is begin a journey, where you can progressively and habitually learn to look at the glass of life that is half full, instead of half empty.

Notice on your notes, I’ve put a little divine equation.  It says, “C + P = E.”  We’re going to look at it every week.  “C” – write the word in, circumstances – plus “P” – perspective – equals “E” – experience.  Your circumstances plus your perspective – the glasses that you look at them through – equals your experience.

And I’d just make a very quick observation, by and large, you have zero control over your circumstances.  I have zero control over what happens in the economy – unless you have a very influential situation that the rest of us don’t.  But I don’t have any of the Arab countries asking me about where they should set oil prices, and I don’t have the President and the cabinet giving me a call and saying, “We’re going to change some policies.  We want to know if it affect you and Theresa.”  You know?  I mean, I don’t have 4.7 million of the people – or the 4.8 or 5 million people in Atlanta saying, “Hey, we heard you and Theresa maybe were going to be driving later.  We’d like to stay off the road so that it makes it kind of nice for you.”

I have zero control over my circumstances.  And so do you.  I wake up days, and something hurts, and I don’t know why.  I wake up days, and you know what?  I thought the finances were here, and then, kind of, this happened.  I wake up days, and all my kids were doing well – and you’ve all been there – and then, they’re just – you find out one of them is not doing so well.

But what you do have, and what I do have – you have a hundred percent control over your perspective.  You have a hundred percent control, in every circumstance, no matter how difficult – you get to make a choice.  And that’s what it is.  You get to choose, Am I going to look at what’s half full in my life in this situation, or am I going to focus on the half empty?  The half empty will take me in directions that will be very, very painful.

In your notes, it says, “Living above my circumstances occurs when my perspective interprets my circumstances, rather than my circumstances determining my perspective.”  That’s the gist of what we’re going to talk about in the whole series.  Living above my circumstances occurs when my perspective – how I choose to look at things – interprets my circumstances, rather than my circumstances – things that happen to me – determining my perspective.

And so, here’s the fundamental question for the next three weeks.  We’d make it four, but we missed one.  For the next four teaching sessions, you’re going to learn how to develop the kind of perspective that transcends our circumstances.  How do you do that?

And I’m going to suggest that the answer is going to be in four keys and four questions.  Four keys and four questions.  Each time, I’m going to give you a question to ask, and I’m not going to talk about mind games: Okay, I’m going to try and pretend I think it’s half full.  Down deep, it just feels and looks half empty.  I’m going to teach you four questions to ask, every time you have a difficult circumstance, and I want to give you four keys.  And if you, over time, will learn to run these four questions and these four keys through any given circumstance, you will experience the power of perspective.

So, with that in mind, we’re going to look at Philippians chapter 1, and key number one is the word focus.  Key number one is the word focus.  And the question is, “Where’s your focus?”

By way of illustration, my friend – fire number one, where was his focus?  Was it upward or inward?  Inward.  What was the result?  Clinical depression.  In the second fire, where was his focus? Upward or inward?  It was upward.  What was the result?  Perspective, blessing others, people asking, “Is there something wrong with you?”  Because he handled it so well.

Now, I don’t know what your circumstances are; I don’t know what you would write on the whiteboard, but we’re going to hear from someone whose present circumstances, when he wrote Philippians chapter 1, were pretty difficult.

The book was written about plus or minus A.D. 62.  It’s written from a Roman prison.  In all likelihood, the apostle Paul is chained to someone.  This happens at a time in his life where he’s already been beaten a couple times, stoned already, left for dead, spent about three years in Arabia, ten years in Tarsus.  He’s been rejected by his own people.

Two or three times he’s had what they call 39 lashes, and if you saw the Passion, the movie, Paul had that experience a couple, three times.  A lot of people don’t live through it.

And so, here’s a guy that’s got scars all over his body, who has a commission to tell people about the great news, that God came to the planet, in the person of Jesus.  He lived a perfect life.  He died on a cross.  He covered all men’s sins, for all time, and the happy news is, He will forgive you and transform your life if you will turn from your sin and, by faith, receive Him.  That’s the news of the Gospel.  And his commission is to tell it to non-Jews, Gentiles.  And as he’s doing exactly what God wants him to do, the will of God has him land in a jail.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was writing a letter to a church – remember, Philippi.  Remember what happened in this church.  Paul went and visited.  God said, you know, “Don’t go that direction,” and he heard the call from Macedonia. There wasn’t even a synagogue.  So, he goes down by the river, because Jews would often meet by the river and have a prayer meeting if there wasn’t enough Jews to have a synagogue.

And he meets Lydia down there – remember?  And then, he meets Lydia, and then, he starts preaching, and a little revival breaks out, and she comes to Christ.  And then, because a revival breaks out, they throw him in jail.  Remember the Philippian jailer?  And so, he’s back in the jail, and an earthquake happens, and he and Silas are singing in the back room.  The jailer’s going to kill himself – “Stop, don’t kill yourself.”  Another little revival happens; he comes to Christ.  That’s the context of what happens.  And now, in his mind’s eye and in his memory, he’s thinking about those relationships that he had, and he’s writing them a letter from a prison cell.

Now, if you were in prison, after doing God’s work and being beaten to the inch of your life a couple, three times, then left for dead and stoned at least once, had a couple times where you were in the deep, left in the ocean.  If there have been times where you’ve been hungry, and now, God’s great reward for your faithful service is to stick you in jail, what kind of letter would you write to people that you care about?

I got mine.  I got mine all written: “Dear Philippians, this is Chip.  Yo, I’m bummed.  Hey, dudes, you can’t believe what this good, loving God has done to me now.  You know, it was great being with you, but I’ll tell you what, I’m not sure I believe any of this stuff myself.  My circumstances stink.  The food stinks.  My wrist is killing me because this chain is too tight.  It’s dark, it’s dirty, it’s damp.  I don’t like rats.  Come visit me, soon.”  I mean, that’s the kind of letter I’d write.  That’s a “the glass is half empty” letter.

What does Paul write?  Philippians chapter 1 opens up, “Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and [the] deacons” – the elders and the deacons.  “I want to say ‘hi’ to everyone,” just a basic greeting.  “I’m a bondservant of Christ.  That’s my role.”  And then, “I want to bless you – ‘Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’”  Grace.  “May good, undeserved things happen in your life because of the great God that we serve, and may you experience the shalom of God, the peace of God, the wholeness of God, the peace of God in your life, in your relationships.”  That’s what he’s saying.

And then, notice verse 3.  He opens up, and he’s going to talk to them.  He opens the letter, he says, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all.”  He just sounds depressed, doesn’t he?  Just sounds down and out.  Now, notice, in parentheses, he’s “offering prayer with joy in [his] every prayer for you all.”  Why?  “In view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.”

I think what was going through Paul’s mind – he thought about Lydia, and he thought about the jailer, and he thought about the revival, and he thought about the relationships, and he thought about what God did, and he thought about when he got out of jail, and he got to tell the mayor or the officials, “You know what?  Guys, you didn’t do this right.”  And he just thought about, Wow, man, God used this, didn’t He?  Your life was like this; now, your life’s like that, and I got to be in on it.  And then, he ends it: “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of [Jesus Christ],” until the day Christ returns.

If you have your pen, I want you to circle three words that I think give us the real focus of Paul’s attitude.  Notice, one, circle the word thank – “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.”  Second word, “Always offering” – circle the word prayer.  He’s not just offering prayer, but – do you hear this?  This is radical – “prayer with joy.”  He says, “I’m getting kind of a spiritual buzz when I pray for you guys, when I remember you and think what happened.  I mean, I’m in chains, but my heart is soaring.”

And then, the final word, he says, “For I am” – circle the word confident.  “Now, I’m confident.  I’m not depressed; I’m not discouraged.  I’m confident of this very thing, that my hard work and my labor for you in the Gospel – you guys are going to keep on going.  God’s going to do whatever He’s going to do in you and through you.  You’re going to grow.  And until Jesus comes back, I want you guys to know, things are going to be okay.”

Now, isn’t this an unusual letter?  They should be writing him letters, going, “Paul, you know, it’s going to be okay.  Hang in there.”  Where’s Paul’s focus?  Upward.  Upward.

I want you to think back, right now, what you wrote on your blackboard.  What’s the most difficult circumstance in your life right now?  And now, I want to ask you, where’s your focus?  Is it what you don’t have, what’s wrong with it, what other people ought to do, who you’re going to blame, why did this happen, how unfair it is, why it’s a raw deal, where is God, how could people treat you like this, doesn’t seem fair?

Or is it upward?  And you say, Well, you know what?  I want it to be upward, but I’m going to be honest with you.  I mean, I’m not going to look up right now, because you might think you’re really talking to me, and I’m not going to raise my hand, but in my heart of hearts, It’s not upward.  It’s inward.  In fact, I didn’t want to get up this morning.  I didn’t want to come to this thing.  But I said I would, so I came.  Would you like to know how to develop an upward focus?  Let’s learn from him.

Notice, in your notes, on the page that’s across, it says, “How to develop an upward focus.”  Number one, it’s a choice.  And I’d like you to write in the word gratitude.  It’s a choice.  Thankfulness isn’t something that comes over you; thankfulness is a choice that you make.  You choose to be thankful.  You don’t feel to be thankful; you choose to be thankful.  And then, you say, “Well, I just can’t.  How can I be thankful?”  How?  By choosing to remember and thank God for significant relationships.

I mean, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, and there may be a lot of reasons to look at the empty part here.  But I’ll tell you what, you can choose to start thanking God. I’ve had some pretty difficult struggles with some of my kids, at times.  But you know what?  Man, I’m thankful for the wife God gave me.  I’m thankful for the mentor and the friend that had been there and I could share it with.  I’m thankful for a couple brothers on staff that I could share it with and go through it with.  You know, I’m thankful for the great times I had with one of my kids before he went through a difficult time, and, by God’s grace, he turned around a couple, three, four years later.

But you know what you can do?  You can do what Paul did.  You can choose to be grateful, and you can choose to start remembering the significant people in your life, the things that God has done, the things that really matter, the things that circumstances, no matter how difficult, can’t take away from you, the people that you love, and the people that love you.  You can willfully choose to start thanking God for them.  And I will tell you, that will start an upward focus.

The second thing you can do is, you can pray.  And this isn’t when you feel like praying.  This is, you choose to pray.  You choose to be grateful, and then, this action is, you pray.  And how do you pray?  You pray with joy, remembering past usefulness, past partners, and things God has done in the past.