You can only walk one direction

You can’t divide your focus. You can’t divide your foundation. A divided foundation won’t hold weight.

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. (Matthew 6:24)

You can only do one thing at a time. That’s what my boss told me years ago. At the time, I don’t think I believed her. I thought I could multi-task, take on many projects and do just as well as someone else who was only working on one.

I’ve learned over the years that she was right. You might have multiple windows open on your computer, but you can really only focus on one of them at a time. Even if I try to write two or three emails at once, I can still only write on one of them at at time.

I can’t divide my focus in a practical way. If I try, I get confused. I get turned around. And at the end of the day, I’m not as effective as I would have been if I just focused on the one thing I could do.

You can’t do everything.

You can’t.

You have limits, because you’re human. That’s why we need to learn to get up again when we fall down, finding the strength to move forward when it feels like we’ve fallen too far behind to ever catch up.

Part of building that kind of resilience is knowing your why. As an author coach, that’s one of the first things I ask my clients. “Why are you writing this book?” If they don’t have a solid reason to stand on, when they face rejection, they’ll crumble completely.

The same is true for your life: Why are you here? Why are you doing this? Why are you pursuing this dream or this calling or this ministry?

You can’t divide your focus. You can’t divide your foundation. A divided foundation won’t hold weight. So you have two choices: You can make your life about Jesus, or you can make your life about you. You can build on your faith, or you can build on your accomplishments.

You have to be focused. You can only walk one direction. The choice is yours, but as someone who spent years walking my own way, I can tell you that nothing eternal ever came out of my own accomplishments. And if what you’re doing isn’t eternal, I’m not sure it’s worth doing.

Questions for Reflection

• What do you believe about multi-tasking?

• Why do you think it’s so difficult to divide our focus, whether it’s on projects or relationships?

• How do you feel about your accomplishments when you realize that you can’t take anything material with you into eternity?

Weekly Memory Verse