When you have trouble keeping your mind on your Bible reading, praying, or on a sermon (never happens at Shandon – right?), here are a few tips:

1) Don’t expect too much of yourself.  When you do, in any field of endeavor -including time with God – it leads to short-term trying harder and a long-term sense of failure frequently followed by quitting.  There are parts of Scripture that are fascinating.  There are prayer needs that are riveting.  There are others that are common and everyday but still important.  Set a level of focus that is fairly normal, and if you fall below that normal level of focus, make yourself go back and start again as a discipline. 

 2) Tell yourself you’re going to have to pass a pop quiz on this passage and make yourself pay attention to the details.  While you pay attention to the details, you may be surprised at the inspiration that pops out of the page at you. 

3)  When your mind wanders during prayer, just stop.  Say, “Lord, excuse me for just a moment.”  Pick up a paper and pen or pencil and write out the distraction you have.  Then you won’t forget it and you’ll be able to go back to it and deal with it when you’re through with prayer.  As soon as you’re finished jotting down a note, just start talking with God again when you were interrupted.

4) Ask yourself, “Why am I bored with this passage of Scripture or this prayer need?”  Maybe you need to eliminate that prayer for a time.  That’s ok to do.  With Scripture, maybe you don’t have any idea why it was written in the first place.  (For example: law, genealogies.)  You can also find out from a Bible dictionary why that Scripture was written such as Nelson’s New Bible Dictionary (the best one-volume, Bible dictionary I know of at this point).  That has helped me, at times, to make difficult passages more interesting.  Also, I’ve been really rewarded by puzzling over something that is in Scripture for years (like genealogies) and finally getting it.  As one man said to me, “I wouldn’t spoil your search to understand the genealogies by telling you why they were written for anything.”  Twenty-five years later, I’m glad Dr. Nelson didn’t give me a quick and easy answer, and I’m glad the Lord made me puzzle about it.  I’m not going to tell you why either.

Over the next week or so, I will publish 5 things that can help to anchor your life.

           Before I tell you about these anchors and how they look, let me make sure you don’t think these keep you anchored to God.  He anchors Himself to you and the anchor line cannot be broken.  These are the things you do because they deepen your sense of being anchored but do not create it.  This past Saturday I gave Patty 12 red roses because I love her like no one else on earth and because she is my wife.  The gift did not cause me to be either married to her nor to be more married to her.  They did enhance my joy in a marriage we already had.  These disciplines will do that for your commitment to God, and that is all they are designed to do.

 Help 1 - A BROKEN-IN BIBLE 

You must become a Bible reader.  It is God’s Word to anyone who reads it.  Your Bible should be a broken-in, well-used book with the feel of something used regularly.  Problems I hear people have that prevent them from having a well-read Bible are:

1.   I don’t understand it.
2. My mind wanders.
3. I don’t see the point of parts of it.

             ANSWERS:

1.  I don’t understand it all either, but I understand it much better as I read it than I do when not understanding it is my excuse for not reading it.
2.  My mind wanders when I fish, watch a movie, talk with Patty, or talk to myself.  So what?  I still go fishing because a wandering mind doesn’t stop the enjoyment of fishing. The same goes for Bible reading. 
3.  I don’t see the point of roses, but Patty does, so I give her roses.  I don’t see the point of genealogies, but African ancestor worshippers who are brought to Christ are more blessed by the genealogies in the Old Testament than by any other part of the Book.  Since when does anything have to mean something to me to be worth my time or money?  Read in faith that it’s in there for a reason and keep at it.  You need to learn to do that about a lot of things – might as well start with Scripture.

Next Time: CALLOUSED KNEES

Every Christian is meant to experience God.  The book of 1 John speaks to ways we experience Him.  In my last two blogs, we saw that one way we experience Him is that we have a new relationship with sin.  In chapter two we see we achieve stability as a ship at anchor is stabilized.  John doesn’t use the term “anchor” in 1 John 2, but the Christian life is certainly described here as anchored.

             Notice all the affirmative statements in 2:12-14.  “Your sins are forgiven.”  “You know Him.”  “You have already overcome the evil one.”  “You are strong.”  “The Word of God abides in you.”  Anchored, solid, and stable.  What a contrast to the hyper spirituality of the heresy of Gnosticism which said you need to know more and more and be more and more pure but could never tell them how much more of either.  For them the carrot of God’s love and approval was always within reach but never in the mule’s mouth.  For the Christian, God in His grace hands the carrot to His people.

             The promise of stability is a wonderful promise in a world as unstable as ours.  I hope you are growing in being anchored, but I warn you.  Unless you get anchored rightly, when things in your world get better, the anchor of Christ can start to feel like a ball and chain.  Remember, rightly anchored doesn’t mean just staying in the same place all the time.  It means you are willingly connected to Christ by faith and surrender and are being drawn to Him by the work of the Holy Spirit.  If this is not the nature of your anchoring, it may not feel like a blessing to you the way it should.

 Anchored Rightly…and NOT

             The worst possible way to be anchored is when you are rowing like crazy in another direction.  When we are dishonest, immoral, or drugged, yet we have honestly accepted Christ as our Savior, His Spirit, Word, and church are annoyances to us.  They’re more like a dog barking when we’re trying to sleep.  The problem for you is God is always right.  If you ever get right with God, you’ll be glad He didn’t say, “Oh, it’s ok.  You go ahead.  I understand.” 

             Another unhelpful way to be anchored is when Christ is like a heavy weight on the bottom that keeps you from going anywhere.  This keeps you from harm but also keeps you from growing and having any Christian dynamic about your life.  This, unfortunately, is what too often passes for Biblical Christianity.  It feels stable to us but looks stuck to others and to God.  The old song, “I Will Not Be Moved” meant I will not be shifting constantly.  It did not mean I will not change as God leads me.

             Christ, our anchor, functions in our lives like the ancient anchor post.  These were found at the ends of piers in the ancient world.  A rope passing through the anchor post was fastened to a ship so that it both kept the ship from danger and thereby made it stable but also drew it home, changing its position.  Our lives are designed to be both stable and changing.  What a reassuring and excitingly dynamic relationship with the Lord this proves to be.  In the next blog please look for anchors that are available to us that produce both stability and dynamic.

 (to see the first part, go to “How to Beat Temptation – Part 1)

2.   Foundational work is best.  All three of these Scripture passages talked about      the importance of building a relationship with God over time.  In the second message we looked at the passage in Matthew (Matthew 7:24 – 27) about building your house upon the rock.  By that Jesus meant you need to go to the trouble to  build a strong foundation with God.  You must not quit because it’s a struggle.      Who wouldn’t rather dig in sand than pound on a rock with a primitive hammer and chisel.  The Lord is telling us that doing foundational work with God will not       always be easy.  Reading through the Bible is not just reading Psalms or John. 

      It’s also reading Deuteronomy, but there’s a reason God put that in the Book.  So be willing to have some bloody knuckles so when the battle with temptation  comes, you will be ready.

      This is not something you can do by relying on Sunday school, church, or your small Bible study group only.  It requires effort on your part.  I can’t urge enough the importance of reading the Word of God daily, talking to God daily, journaling when you reach a sticking point, and practicing spiritual disciplines like fasting, charity work, and accountability.  In short, make as much of an effort in your relationship with God as you do with anything else.  Make more effort if you really haven’t been that much into effort in your life.

  3.  A changed nature is the only way.  All three of the solutions offered in this Scripture passage assume you need a nature that is receptive to God.  This is not    man’s normal nature.  That’s why in Romans 12:2 Paul said, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  The renewed mind is the mind made receptive by your working at spiritual growth.

      One way to look at what transformation involves is that before we are born again we’re like a radio that is neither turned on nor tuned in to God’s broadcast frequency.  When we are born again God turns on our ability to receive His message and tunes us in to His channel.  This means we become naturally   receptive to Him, but it does not mean that it requires no effort on our part.  The business of transformation, like the business of presenting our bodies to the Lord, is something we must do on a regular basis.

       As we grow in grace, our ability to hear and understand His Word becomes more and more natural, our desire to do His will more and more natural, and our willingness to yield to temptation more and more unnatural.

       I don’t know how much you are working in your life at dealing with temptation early rather than late, at doing the foundational work necessary to be able to do that without a lot of struggle, and to grow in changing your nature, but these are by far the best ways to handle temptation successfully.