Jesus said, “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring your son here.” (Luke 9:41 MSG) At a rare family dinner on Sunday night, my mother complained about her boys’ lack of focus. Between double fisting a spoonful of soup and cellphones, she wasn’t sure of how to deal with pending nervous breakdown from the lack of a singular focus at the dinner table. Our constantly changing conversation topics, half finished sentences, and beeping of electronics was driving her crazy. Evidently, she was having the nervous breakdown that people should experience when focus jumps between an impossible number of things all at the same time. I’m sure you and your folks know what i’m talking about. The worst thing about being told you have no focus comes from being told that from somebody who knows little of your disciplines and lacks incredible focus themselves. Am I right? Yeah, I’m sure you had people like that give you an earful about focus as well. What is supposed to be a critique of your lack of supposed discipline most often turns out to be a subjective disagreement between the prerogatives of two individuals. As a result, we blow off our supposed “lack of focus” as the rantings of somebody uneducated or flat out crazy. But what if your “lack of focus” was a feeling ruminating from your deepest innards, like the conscience beyond your subconscious? You know that suggestive yearning that is surely not your own and therefore a supernatural tug coming from the Holy Spirit. Here’s an example: on any given day, you find yourself coming back harping on a thought or experience you once had, but the activity you’re engaged in has no correlation between that thought you are having and what you’re supposed to be doing. Most students call it, “daydreaming.” However, what I’m talking about goes beyond that. It is not being bored so etching some sketches on a piece of paper while looking at the diesel fumes rising above your window. What I’m talking about is, you are balancing an unbalanced check book and all of a sudden, you’re thinking about beer or the stage in the video game you were playing. That is the lack of focus I’m talking about. If that is whats happening then we’re in trouble. And that the “lack of focus” you were feeling on the insides was actually a lack of God’s presence in your life– because God created you for something more than that interrupting thought that possesses you while you do what you were doing! Most of us are experiencing a lack of focus because we’re focusing on girls/boys, drugs, partying, electronics, etc. For a lot of us, this lack of focus comes and goes like that ugly pair of skinny jeans we’ll never ever fit back into. Let’s look at what Jesus says to his disciples again. He says, “what a faithless and twisted generation! No sense of God. No focus to your lives!” When we can’t keep it together in our head to focus on the work at hand, then be assured the sense of God is not within you and we need to get it together. The disciples should have been able to heal this boy. More than that, this father should have been able to muster more than enough faith to deal with his son’s illness. The context Jesus is speaking in is of how we are afforded opportunities and given things and experiences; but because our focus is divided, we can’t do what we should be able to do. I want you to start thinking about how your lack of focus led to experiences where you just failed miserably or didn’t meet the standard you knew you could hit. Then I want you to outline those things that took focus away from you. Finally, I want you to pray and ask God to help you through those distractions. It’s time to live with focus, with a sense of God in our daily lives. I bet your life outcomes will drastically benefit from the renewed focus.