It’s been a few months since my last post, but today, I want to share with you the importance of being forward focused. We hear a lot about focus in life, and though I believe in being focused, how I view focus has changed over the years. I do not support being laser-focused in life, as I believe it causes us to neglect other areas of our life, and I am focused on living a well-balanced life. I do, however, strongly believe in the importance of being forward focused. In order to live well, move forward, and grow in God, we must be forward focused.
Living forward focused keeps us moving forward.
This sounds so simple, but so often we are focused on every direction in our life, except the forward direction. Understanding the importance of being forward focused will help us to adjust the direction of our focus, which will inevitably affect the direction that our life moves in.
The more we look back, the harder it is to move forward.
Though there are times when it is beneficial to look back, we must be intentional and Spirit-led about our looking back tendencies. It can be beneficial to look back in order to learn from mistakes and even recount God’s goodness in our lives, however, as a standard practice, we must focus on looking ahead. Consider Philippians 3:13:
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,”
As it relates to growing in life, there comes a time when we must forget those things which are behind and reach forth unto those things which are before us.
Secondly, we must watch our relationships.
Many people are living in the past. As much as we are living and breathing in today, we could be mentally and practically living in yesterday. When people are living in the past, they refuse to let go of what was, they relish in what they used to do and used to have, and they even still base today’s decisions on yesterday.
If you are focused on moving forward, growing and maturing in Christ and life, you must guard yourselves against these types of relationships. The more you spend time around people living in the past, the more that your thinking and affections will be tied to the past. The more that your thinking and affections are tied to the past, the more that your actions will be rooted in the past. Hence, you begin repeating patterns, as opposed to doing better.
In order to be forward focused, you must think and act from a focus that is tied to the future.
Thirdly, we must watch our habits and routines.
The things we repeatedly do will affect us. We must be mindful as to why we do what we do, as well as how we feel when we do it. There are things that we have done in our pasts that no longer serve us today. How will we identify these behaviors? By being mindful and aware. We must begin to assess what we do, as well as why we do it. There are some things we do just because we’ve always done it.
We must grow in identifying why we do what we do, and be willing to make any necessary changes. These things could be big or small, but we have to know that some things that we do could be keeping us tied to the past, as opposed to moving us forward to the future that God has for us.
Lastly, we must watch our words.
We must base our words on God’s Word and not on our past or what we’ve done. There is no hope in that. There is, however, hope in God’s Word. We must also avoid agreeing with the words of others when they don’t line up with God’s Word. Ecclesiastes 7:10 tells us:
“Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.”
For if you watch a person who speaks such as this, I would not be surprised to observe difficulty in making today’s decisions that will move them forward. Why? Because they have yet to let go of what was.
Life is seasonal and we experience many different seasons with various people, the more that we live. I have found that we tend to expect our seasons and people to stay the same, and while sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, we must be able to let go, come to peace, and continue moving forward.
The only way I have found to keep moving forward is to live with a forward focused mindset.
No matter the season you find yourself in today, I pray that this message blesses you with peace, understanding, and helps you to let go of what was and focus forward on what is to come. If we are living, there is still more. We don’t want to miss out on all the good in front of us because we are too occupied looking back.
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