Live Free with Josh Howerton - Less Fear, More Joy | Ep. 351 | Monday, June 10, 2024

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

God has you here for a reason, so how do we stay focused on what matters to Him? We all know how easy it is to be distracted. We are on our phones too much, and social media can steal an hour easily. So, what do we need to do to avoid distraction? Join us this week as we study God’s word and consider what an undistracted life looks like. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.com. dot church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, I'm so grateful for all the guests that sit in from time to time on this podcast. I absolutely love learning from them. And I also love that you're getting a break from the same old voice. Plus, we all get to learn some great stuff we can stick in our heart.

If you are new to the Daily Drive, my name is Mike Bro, and that's what we attempt to do every day. Just stick a little truth, little wisdom, little hope in our hearts as we grow closer to God together. And we spend just about, I don't know, six or seven minutes Monday through Friday doing that. So thanks so much for joining us no matter where you might be on your spiritual journey. I thought we spent this week talking about distraction. I've been reading a great book by Bob Goff called Undistracted. It's been inspiring me to be more focused, more intentional, more purposeful with my days, more joyful as I navigate my life. So let me just read a short excerpt from that book, he says, we live with a massive amount of distraction. Desperate headlines,

smartphone scrolling, an endless to-do list, not to mention the nagging questions of the heart. Think about it. Every day, a thousand pings and regrets and worries prevent you from living out your joy-infused, God-given purpose. But no matter how distracting this world is, you can return to everything that makes your heart skip a beat with joy, instead of miss a beat with fear. use less fear, more joy. I don't know about you, but I can become easily distracted by things that don't really matter. Now, I'm not talking about being ultra-disciplined where there's no fun in your life. I'm not talking about the occasional Netflix bends or taking a nap in a hammock or driving through the Krispy Kreme donut shop when the hot sign is on. Those distractions

can be a nice break from the routine. But if we're not careful, those kind of distractions and many others can become obsessions. They can become habits. And eventually, they can even become idols in our life that pull us away from the relationship and the purpose that God has for us. When I got the notification on my phone about a year ago that told me, your screen time was up 28% over last week.

I said to myself, what? You know what? Social media is just becoming an unhealthy distraction for me. So I had to make the decision to cut it out of my life. Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to do the same, but you might. I am suggesting, though, that you take inventory and honestly identify the things that might be distracting you, hindering you from fully loving God and loving people in a way that brings this vibrant joy into your life. I can remember hearing this definition decades ago when my kids were young, failure is to succeed at things that really don't matter. failure is to succeed at things that really don't matter. And I thought to myself as a young dad, you know what, I want to succeed at things that matter.

So I began to reevaluate my schedule and making sure that my energy was flowing toward the things that were eternal in nature. And it is a practice that I've had to regularly continue throughout the years, just asking myself, what is it that's distracting me from becoming God's best version of me and making a difference in other people's lives that really, really counts? About the same time I heard that definition of failure, I attended a time management seminar. The church I was serving, they paid for me to go because I was an administrative and organizational mess. I'm still not great at it. But at that seminar, I can remember the speaker giving this illustration where he said,

just imagine we have an eye beam laid here on the floor. And it's about 140 feet long, you know the kind of eye beam I'm talking about construction eye beam. He says, if I'm standing on one side of the eye beam and you're on the other side, side of the ibeam, would you walk across the ibeam to get this $100 bill? And everybody raised their hand. Yep, we'd do it. He said, well, let's change the scenario a little bit. Let's take this ibeam and let's put it on a crane and let's drop it in between the World Trade Centers. They were standing at the time when I heard this illustration. He said, they're about 136 feet apart, so you've got two foot overhang on each side. I'm standing on one side of the eye beam,

you're on the other. Would you walk across for this $100 bill? No one raised their hand. He said, said, who would walk across it for a thousand? Nobody raised her hand. He said, all right, what about 5,000, but I'm going to change the scenario just a little bit? It's starting to rain, and the wind is starting to blow a little bit. How many of you would walk across the eye beam to get the 5,000? Nobody, again, raised her hand. He looked at a lady in the second row. Never forget this. He said, do you have any kids? She goes, I have a three-year-old? He said, if I had your three-year-old on the other side, would you walk across the eye beam to get her? She says, in a heartbeat, I would. He says, that's what you have to ask yourself.

What is it in your life that you would walk across the ibeam for? So I have tried to bring my life back into that kind of focus time and time again. I don't want to get distracted and fall off the eyebeams, so to speak. I want to walk toward the things that God put me on this earth to do and experience the thrill of being used for his purposes. You know, Jesus was the master of focus. So many distractions trying to pull him away from the people. purposes of God, approval ratings, hate-filled critics, people pulling him from every direction,

friends who wanted him to seize the momentum of popularity and become the king, not to mention the relentless pursuit of temptation every day in his life. I believe it's why it says over and over in the Gospels, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. In his humanity, he needed to recharge. He needed to refocus to make sure his relationship with the father was not drifting. He needed to re-center his heart toward the reason that he came. And, gang, he didn't just walk across an eyebeam. He, like, carried one and allowed his body to be nailed there so that you and I could be free from the penalty of sin, so that you and I could have the same kind of close and replenishing relationship with the father, so that we could

walk through our days undistracted from our purpose on this planet. So each day this week, we're going to zoom in on a passage that will encourage us to live an undistracted life. And I'm just praying that our time in God's Word will point us toward a life of unbridled joy and passion and purpose. So don't get distracted and miss a single day this week. Love God, love people well today, and I'll see you back here tomorrow. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online.

live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.