Focus on God
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”— Romans 15:13
As you know, the world around us is fallen and dark. Turn on the news, and you will hear about murder, disease, chaos, and war. There are terrorist threats of all kinds, and we hear of so many people around the world who are suffering.
Yet in Romans 15:13 our Father is described as the God of hope who wants us to have peace in believing by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think about the contrast between this God of hope who wants to fill us with joy and peace, and the darkness, sadness, and cynicism of this world. These are two completely different realities, which is why we need to be careful, beloved, to focus on God and not on the world.
We must seize God’s Word and not let anything else in. If we are giving ourselves to the world all the time— feeding on the things of the world, taking counsel from people who don’t look at life through the paradigm of God’s Word, watching movies that entertain from a secular worldview—we are not going to have hope, we are not going to have peace, and we are not going to have joy.
But if we focus on God and magnify Him in our lives, if we feed on His Word, discipline our thoughts, and control what we look at and listen to, we will find ourselves growing in strength, peace, and the power of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t happen all at once, but it will happen. I promise you this: as you focus on God more and more, you will grow in peace, joy, and hope in Christ Jesus.
Father God, thank You for the wisdom to seize Your Word so I keep my eyes on You. Help me to feed my heart and mind with Your truth and not with the superficial, lying deceptions of the world. Thank You for being the God of hope who fills me with joy and peace by the power of Your Spirit.
Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider, Rivers of Revelation (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2020), Used by permission.