Fix your eyes on Jesus

The other Sunday, during a sermon on foundations at church, the Holy Spirit brought a phrase to my mind that has stayed with me ever since. And it was this:

"Fix your eyes on Jesus."

The more I thought about it, the more I realised the Lord wasn't just giving me something encouraging to think about. He was showing me something about myself that I hadn't really noticed before.

If I'm honest, somewhere along the way I had become distracted.

Not because I'd stopped loving Jesus, and not because I'd stopped praying or seeking Him, but because, without really noticing it, other people's voices and opinions were becoming louder. I was spending so much time thinking about circumstances, trying to work things out, and looking for answers that all the noise was starting to drown out the one voice that mattered most.

Fix your eyes on Jesus.

As I reflected on it, I realised how easy it is for our focus to shift. One minute we're looking at Jesus and trusting Him with everything, and the next we're consumed by circumstances, delays, disappointments, unanswered prayers, and all the things we wish were different.

It wasn't that I'd taken my eyes off Jesus completely, because I hadn't. Looking back, I think what had happened was that I'd allowed so many other things to crowd in around Him that His voice was no longer getting the attention it should have been.

I felt the Lord bringing me back to a place where I needed to focus my full attention on Him again rather than everything else that was competing for it. I realised I needed to take a step back from all the noise and get back to listening to His voice again.

The Bible tells us that His sheep know His voice, and that's not something that happens overnight. They know His voice because they've spent time with Him. They've walked with Him. They've learned what His voice sounds like through relationship. The same is true for us. The more time I spend with the Lord, the more I learn to recognise His voice above all the others competing for my attention.

I think that's what the Lord was showing me. Not that every other voice was wrong, but that I'd been listening to too many of them.

Sometimes when God feels distant, we can think He's stepped back somehow, but more often than not He's exactly where He's always been. He's still speaking, still leading, still working and still faithful. The difference is that somewhere along the way we've become distracted.

The issue isn't that He has moved.

The issue is that our attention has.

That's why this phrase has stayed with me all week.

We need to bring our focus back to Him, to readjust our vision, and to stop looking to everything and everyone else for answers that only He can give. We need to set our face like flint and keep following Him, even when we don't understand what He's doing or where He's leading.

Hebrews tells us that He is the author and finisher of our faith. The One who started the work is the One who will complete it. He's never asked us to carry the weight of making everything happen. He's never asked us to have all the answers. What He asks of us is to trust Him, follow Him, and keep our eyes fixed on Him.

Maybe that's the reminder some of us need today.

If your focus has drifted, if the noise has become too loud, or if you've found yourself paying more attention to everything around you than to Jesus, then come back to that simple instruction:

Fix your eyes on Jesus.

Because what He starts, He is faithful to complete.