Open My Eyes: A 21-Day Fasting Devotional from Jentezen FranklinSample

Fasting Day 6: Perfect Vision Is Not Enough - Eyes On One Side Only

Stay the course! Your first full work week is coming to an end and you can spend more time with the Lord as you fast. By now you have probably experienced it all: headaches, nausea, the brown tongue and the bad breath it produces, and the low energy spells. I promise you, if you will stay the course, there is a sweetness coming when you hit your stride in week two. Today, we’re fasting and praying, and we’re going to really center in on one word: focus. Ask God to give you the focus that you need this new year. Ask Him to show you what you need to focus on. Some people have 20/20 vision of their past, and they only focus on what’s behind them. They’re completely blind to the amazing future that God has for them. Whether you are wildly successful, or you’re enduring some of the greatest trials of your life, you don’t need to focus on your past. You need to focus on the future. God stands ready to hand you the next chapter of your life, but if all you can see is what’s behind you, you’ll never know what’s before you. Leave the past behind, and turn around, and see all that God has for you. He said in the scripture, “Not that I have already attained, or that I have perfected, but I press on and I fix my eyes on what lies ahead. I lay hold of that which the Lord Jesus has for me, and I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, I forget those things which are behind and I reach forward into those things which are ahead.” That’s what God wants you to do. Focus on what’s ahead, not on what’s behind. I believe you’re going to find that upward call of Jesus Christ.

Focus is Everything

You can’t grab hold of your future if you’re focused on your past. Allow me to paint a word picture. If your body is turned in one direction you can’t see what’s behind you because it’s physically impossible. You have to turn around to see the other direction. The same is true spiritually. Some people have 20/20 vision of their past – but they are completely blind to the amazing future God has for them.

Whether you were wildly successful or endured some of life’s greatest hardships in your past, at some point you have to turn your back on all that, turn around and adjust your focus on your future. God stands ready to hand you the next chapter of your life, but if all He can see is your back, you’ll never even know He’s there. Leave the past behind; turn around and see all the Lord has for you.

Prayer: 

Father, we pray today for the right focus. Open our eyes to focus in on what matters, focus on our family, focus on our marriages, focus on people that love us, and that we love. Help us to have a focus, most importantly, on You, Jesus. We’re not fasting to be fasting. We’re fasting to see You, to focus on You, to make You supreme Lord of our lives.