Get your eyes off yourself - Daily Devotional August 13th

Daily Bible Reading Plan - 1 Kings 8, Jeremiah 34, Mark 8

Get Your Eyes Off Yourself

From my experience I have noticed that a large majority of my problems or my inability to accomplish a task happen when my eyes are on myself rather than on what I am trying to accomplish. For Example, have you ever tried to fry an egg while never looking at the egg and just keeping your eyes fixed on yourself (man that pan is hot). Or have you ever tried driving a car down the road while staring at yourself the whole time (those women putting makeup on while driving scare me). Or how about trying to stay focused on work while worrying about all the things you personally need to accomplish. These are all fairly impossible tasks to accomplish unless you get your eyes off yourself.

In Mark 8 Jesus notices people who have gathered to Him and is concerned about them because they did not bring any food and does not want to send them away hungry. When He expresses His concern the disciples reply in vs. 4 "How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?". What they were saying is this, we see the same people you do Jesus and there are a lot of them. We also see that we do not have enough food to feed all these people and there is no place to buy food around here for miles. We brought food for us but not for them and I am keeping what I have.

In vs. 5 Jesus asks a simple question of them in response to their question, "How many loaves do you have?". The disciples tell Jesus they have seven and then as you read on we discover that Jesus multiplies the bread and that those 7 loaves of bread and some fish feed about 4000 people. Wow! What and incredible story.

I do not know how many of the 4000 who got fed knew where the food came from but for sure the disciples knew. Jesus is teaching a lesson through this awesome miracle and He was teaching it not to the unbeliever but to the believer or the christian. The principle is this, get your eyes off yourself. The disciples obviously knew how much food they had and when they assessed the situation at the beginning of the story their eyes were on themselves rather than on those they were ministering to. Jesus, on the other hand, according to Luke 19:10 has come to "seek and save the lost". This is to say that His eyes are on one thing and that is His purpose of saving people from their sin and bringing them into their eternal purpose.

This purpose has been passed on to us through the great commission in Matthew 28:19-20. Our focus is to be on people and on seeing them saved from their sins and brought into their eternal purpose. Our focus gets so off as Christ followers some times. Rather than focusing on the common cause of winning people to Christ we get so nit picky and caught up in evaluating a church service or seeing if they have the right programs that fit my needs. Sometimes we even do not like the way a situation is handled or we do not like the way a few people on the team are so we shut down. It is so easy to find all the things we don't like about something when our eyes are on ourselves. It is so easy to not see the solution to a challenge when we are not focused on the right thing.

What is the right thing and how do we keep our eyes off ourselves? The Bible says in Hebrews 12:2 that we are to look unto Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith. As long as we keep our eyes on Him our heart for people will continue to beat strong because He is a God that is willing that none should perish and all should come to know Him. Jesus gets the attention of the disciples in Mark 8:6 when He takes the loaves from the disciples, blesses it, breaks it and gives it back to them so they can distribute it back to the people. In essence He gets their attention off themselves and back on Him through this miracle.

Where are you at today? What is your focus on? Are your eyes on yourself or are they on Jesus Christ so that you can fulfill the cause of seeing people come into the kingdom of God? Let's all take a minute today and get our eyes of ourselves.

Thanks for listening

Tomorrows Bible Reading - 1 Kings 9, Jeremiah 35, Mark 9

Dream Big
Ben