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I was talking to a homeless guy on the street that asked, "how do I do it? How do I keep from drinking? How do I keep from falling into sin?" I replied "you gotta keep focused on God and he'll help you".


Truth is, it's very difficult to stay focused on God, especially when we have "things" going on in our lives. I think this is something that happens to all of us! We have a tendency to take our eyes off of God and focus on the needs we have. Just like when Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water, he was focused on Jesus and as soon as his concerns turned to the large waves, he sank!


This has been a particularly hard week for me to keep focused. I had a couple of monster moves (where I move furniture in our large van, not dance moves) that have put my body into shock. Even as I type, my fingers ache from punctures, jams and smashings. I think I'll stick to the easier moves from here on out. So much time and effort is spent on the bigger harder moves that it's not worth the extra money they might bring in. I can do better with 3 or 4 small moves than I can with 1 or 2 big ones. The issue is that I take any work I can get right now because we are pretty short on monthly support. This causes me to lose focus of doing what I know God has us here to do. I'm more focused on earning enough to take care of our basic needs and then I start to sink.


Obviously we all have needs and a big family has big needs!  So how do we keep focused on God? I read once about the Jesuit priests at a certain monastery would take the time three times a day to re-center on God. In the morning, noon and evening, they would stop whatever they were doing for a few minutes and pray. They would ask God if they were doing what he wanted them to be doing.


A few years back, in John Burks book "Soul Revolution" he introduces the idea of the 30/30. No, not the Winchester 30/30, even though that is one of my favorites. Actually, I think it was called the 60/60, and what he did was have his church congregation pick up a cheap wrist watch out in the lobby that would automatically beep every 60 minutes. The idea was to re-center on God every 60 minutes for 60 days. So whenever the watch beeped, they stopped what they were doing for just a minute and asked God "am I doing what you want me to be doing right now?"


I guess amazing things started happening in their lives. He even set up a blog page where they could post awesome things that God started doing. I don't know if this is the answer of staying focused on God, but, I think it's definitely a start. If you want to see your community turned upside down, maybe you should give it a try. I'm going to start doing this on November 1st and continue for the rest of the year, I think that's close enough to 60 days. I would like to invite you to join me in this challenge. If you will, please let me know so I can pray for you while you're doing it! Who knows what God will do? I'm gonna bet it'll be amazing though!