Bible Talk With Sister Deb: Spiritual Crosshairs: Moving Jesus from Peripheral to Center

We explore the critical need for Christians to refocus their spiritual vision in today's chaotic world, moving from blurred attention to clear sight fixed on Jesus Christ.

• Understanding spiritual refocus as a form of new beginning
• Using prayer as our spiritual corrective lenses when vision becomes blurred
• Learning from Peter's failed focus when walking on water (Matthew 14:28-31)
• Drawing inspiration from the woman with the issue of blood's determined focus (Mark 5:25-34)
• Recognizing how focusing on Jesus stirs our faith and helps us rise above problems
• Following Job's example of maintaining Godward focus during catastrophic loss
• Moving Jesus from our peripheral vision to center focus
• Understanding that "what we focus on grows"
• Practicing regular refocusing through prayer and Scripture reading

If you'd like to contact Sister Deb, email her at osbornedebraK@gmail.com. Support the show through PayPal/HOR-421 or visit hor421show.buzzsprout.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Song and Show Introduction
• 1:41 Refocus: A New Beginning
• 4:13 Peter's Loss of Focus on Water
• 11:14 The Woman with the Issue of Blood
• 14:59 Prayer: The Key to Staying Focused
• 19:52 Job's Example and Final Prayer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

I woke up this morning with my mind Stayed on Jesus. I woke up this morning with my mind Stayed on Jesus. I woke up this morning with my mind Stayed on Jesus. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah Stand on Jesus.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Hey, you're listening to Bible Talk with Sister Debra Osborne. Bible Talk will be airing on WTUK 105.1 FM every Sunday at 4 pm. If you missed the show, you can listen to it on the 421 podcast streaming on Apple or Spotify. You go to the website at hor421showbuzzsproutcom, and I'd like to give thanks to all the listeners and supporters and always keep us in prayers as we spread the gospel of our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. If you'd like to contact Sister Deb, you can email her at osbraindebrakay at gmailcom. That's O-S-B-O-R-N-E-D-E-B-R-A-K at gmailcom, and if you'd like to support the show, you can support it through PayPal slash H-O-R-421, or you go through the website at hor421showbuzzsproutcom.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Now I give you your host, sister Deb. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. I love that song, so it's awesome to be back in the studio today to spread the Word of God. Welcome to Bible Talk. So today I want to talk to you. Sit around and I think about the stuff that's going on around us right now, the killings and the shootings, and just the craziness, people, that should let us know that testing time is just ahead, it's coming and you know we should all really be scared. We should all be thinking, we should all be uh, uh, down on our knees and talking to the Lord about all of this craziness. Um, but, but the words I want to the the. What I want to talk today is about. It's about a new beginning.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Okay, and there's many words from the Bible that mean a new beginning or that could mean a new beginning. Let's just say that it's not necessarily that they mean a new beginning, but they could mean the words like resurrection. We could use that as a new beginning. Reconciliation, regeneration, really Redemption, reconciliation, regeneration, really redemption. You know all of them. Words could mean a new beginning. But I am going to use a word that could mean a new beginning that's not in the Bible, not that I've found it If I ever do, I'll get on here and apologize, I've not found it but that word is called refocus. Refocus and friends.

Speaker 1: 3:15

The reason I wanted to bring that word up is because it seems like we have lost. Our attention has been blurred, we have lost our eyesight, we've lost all sight of things around us. And you know our attention has been blurred, our sight is out of focus. You know, psalm 6 and 7 says my eye is consumed because of grief. It waxeth old because of my enemies. We have let the enemy that is around us blur our vision so bad. And that's like saying my vision's blurred, my eyes are worn out, and it sounds to me like what we need to refocus right Now.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I don't know, you hunters out there might think I'm crazy, but I don't know if I got this right. I hope so. I'm not a hunter, but refocusing Hunters do it every year. I know they sight their guns and their bows for last year and for hunting season and I know they've got to do it again. When they pull their guns and their bows out, they've got to refocus their sights right. They refocus them and it's kind of like. It's like looking through binoculars. Okay, you, you have to focus to see clearly ahead of you. You have to adjust them. I've got a little pair at home and when I hold them up to my eyes, they've got two little things that my fingers go on and I push it right or left and that focuses. Okay, that focuses, and whatever I'm looking at out there comes into clear vision because I'm focusing.

Speaker 1: 5:01

So, with that in mind, I want to ask you a question. So, with that in mind, I want to ask you a question. I want you to ask yourself, actually ponder this what has popped up in your life in the last year that has caused your vision, your vision, to be blurred? What has popped up that's caused uh, that's broken your focus from where we, as children of God, should be focusing. What has broken that focus? I know there's so much craziness going on around us right now and it's going to get worse. We read the headlines of what the craziness is going on and it's going to get worse. People and we have to refocus. We have to get our attention back on Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Hebrews 12 and 2 says Look into Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Now we ask ourselves how do we refocus. So let's use this analogy. So we start having bad eyesight or blurred vision, right. So we go to the eye doctor and he puts us through some vision test. When it gets done, he prescribes us glasses or contact lenses to correct our vision right, to help us to refocus, to help us to make our sight clear, right. But what I want to tell you today is that we need to put on, if you will, our spiritual lenses. Let's say that, let's put on our spiritual lenses to make our way clearer. And you ask me okay, what is spiritual lenses? Okay, let's go on and say our spiritual corrective lenses and I'm going to say that's prayer.

Speaker 1: 6:49

You know, friends, today the devil, his scheme and his plan is for us to lose our focus on Jesus, and it's obvious that we, as Christians in the 21st century, we've lost our focus. We've taken our eyes completely off of the cross of Jesus Christ. You know, we have to refocus. We need to go from worrying to worship, from the past to the present, from fear to faith. See, we've lost our focus and we need to refocus on the promises of God. We need to go from the negative to the positive. I hate negativity. I hate negativity. We need to stop being people pleasers and be God pleasers, you know, because he's the only one that we're going to answer to and that's what we need to do. So, brothers and sisters, we need to get Jesus out of our peripheral vision. We need to stop putting Jesus in our peripheral vision, on our side view, and we need to get him out of our peripheral vision and focus on him right in front of us and follow him. You know what peripheral vision is right? You only see things off to the side and you really can't see it clearer until it comes way out in front of you. My friends, we need to put Jesus in front of us and focus on Him and follow Him. You know we have to get our focus back on Jesus, christ and the cross, and our focus should move from us and me and mine to Christ, you know. So there's a couple of different people in the Old Testament today, in the New Testament today, that I want us to look at. Okay, I've got a couple examples. They've lost their focus. So, matthew 14, 28 through 31,.

Speaker 1: 8:39

A disciple named Peter. He walks on the water. Peter, now One of two men in the history of the world to ever walk on the water and he messed that up. What do you do? So, jesus and his disciples? The disciples are on the ship, and I'm not going to go into grave detail of the whole story. The disciples are on a ship and they see this, this, what they think is a spirit walking on the water, and they're, they're terrified. The Bible says they were afraid. And Peter stands up and he says you know, jesus, if this is you, let me come to you, bid me to come. I think what he said and you know what Jesus said come on, I'm paraphrasing. He said Jesus. Jesus said come on out here, peter, right.

Speaker 1: 9:25

So Peter steps off the boat, the man walks on the water to go to Jesus. But then what? Peter took his eyes off of Jesus Christ. He took his eyes off Jesus. He saw the wind and the waves around him and he took his eyes off Jesus. And what happened? He lost his focus, people. And what happened? He began to sink. He began to sink, he was doing fine, but when he took his eyes off Jesus, peter fell in the water and he started to sink. He was doing fine when he was in focus on God.

Speaker 1: 10:01

You know, people, we need to stop looking at what's happening all around us and keep our thoughts and our focus on Jesus Christ. We had to have faith in the things in front of us. We had to have faith that he's already there and he's helping us, and we need to stop Stop, like I said, putting him in our peripheral vision and put him in front of us. You know, when we lose our focus, two things happens. Okay, we just by peter's example here. Two things happen we lose our focus, fear creeps in he got scared of the wind and the rain and the waves or whatever and then what? We start to sink. When we take our eyes off Jesus Christ, we will lose focus. We will let the winds and the waves of the storms, all them things in life, they'll creep up on us, and the world has done that today. Brothers and sisters. Today people have lost their focus on Jesus Christ. We can't be like Peter and ask the Lord, lord, send me, let me, let me, let me come out there, blah, blah, blah, and as soon as he says, okay, come on, we lose our focus. We can't be like that.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Now, the second person that I had in there is Mark 5, 25 and through 34, and it's the lady with the issue of blood. Her focus for 12 years had been on her health. Her focus was doing whatever she could do to get well, and the bible tells us that she spent everything that she had trying to get better, but nothing worked. The Bible says she actually got worse. You know she's focusing on her health, but when she heard about Jesus Christ, the Bible didn't say where she heard or how she heard. It just said when she heard about Jesus Christ that she turned her focus on learning more about him. She refocused on Jesus to the point that he's coming through town. He's got this crowd following him and they're so thick and so many people. She just wanted to touch his garment. She didn't care whether he touched her. She didn't care whether he anointed her head or touched her hair or touched her forehead or even touched her arm. She focused on touching his garment and the Bible says when he come by, she squeezed herself in. I can just about see it. She pressed herself in amongst all these people and as the Lord walks by, she reaches her hand out and she touches his garment. That's focus right there. That's focus right there. That's faith right there. And you know what the Bible says. Immediately she was healed, not tomorrow, not the next day, not a couple of hours later. The Bible said immediately she was healed. Look at that.

Speaker 1: 12:55

Focus, people, and see when we focus on Jesus Christ, when we focus, things happen. One of them is our faith will be stirred. See, she focused on Jesus so much that all she had to do was touch his clothes. And when our faith is stirred, we rise above our problems. And, my friends, I'm telling you today we need to get our sights set back on Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 13:35

We have a tendency of getting too busy and becoming stressed with worldly things that we tend to forget about the importance of being focused. We develop a routine that will just get us by and then we think we no longer even need to focus because we can do it ourselves. Then, when we think that we can do it ourselves, what do we do? Then a little few other things happen. Then we start thinking well, you know, we forget about things that we should be doing daily, like you know, witnessing to someone praying for people. You know we miss the opportunities that, because we don't focus on Jesus anymore, we miss these opportunities.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Friends, I'm telling you, serving God takes focus and it's not as much as seeing with the natural eye. It's seeing with the spiritual eye, you know, and it takes the eye of faith. It takes the eye of faith to truly focus on God and we need to take our eye of faith and we need to use that eye of faith and focus on the cross. Friends, we need to focus on the blood of the Lamb. We need to focus on our lost brothers and sisters and our lost families. We need to focus on the churches right now and what's going on in our churches. We need to focus on praying for the people around us that's being ridiculed and put down and all over the word of God, people that's being shot and killed over the Word of God. We need to focus on all of this. You know Now our old, fleshly, carnal being. We must take up our cross daily and get focused and follow Jesus, because when we focus on Jesus, we focus on our faith, and when we focus on our faith, we focus on our prayers and our prayers.

Speaker 1: 15:27

People are the key to staying focused, because when we stop praying, we lose focus and we'll sink and we will give up, and so we always need to pray. We need to follow the example that Jesus gave us. There were so many times in the Bible that he would just get up and go to the mountains or into the wilderness to be alone and pray to his, you know, to his father. He focused like that. And, friends, I'm telling you here today God is ready to do amazing things in your lives. He's ready to show you what he's prepared for you. But he just wants us to get focused on Him so you can receive what it is he's prepared. He wants you to be focused. You know, some people have stopped what they're supposed to be doing and they veered off into other things and other things. That's really not in the will of God.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Proverbs 4 and 25 says Keep your eyes focused on what is right and look straight ahead at what is good and see. It's this lack of focus that makes some Christians, including the ministers of the gospel, get involved in things. That's not right and we need to get our focus back on our mission and on God's purpose for our life. And we tend to focus on the distractions of our jobs, our financial problems, our family issues, which is really just trivial things. Really. I was reading about it's called the 80-20 principle, if you've heard of it or not, but it's I was reading about focusing and it's called the 80-20 principle and what it is. It says we tend to focus on the 20% of negative in our lives when really 80% of our lives is going pretty good. That just I thought, man, that's crazy.

Speaker 1: 17:22

But you know, people, when we first started our walk with God, we hit the road running. We go to Bible study, we start off reading the Word of God, we go to church regularly and then, as soon as life throws a little bitty few curves in our paths, we lose focus. Friends, when life throws storms in our path, we have to stay focused. The wind's blowing, the rain's falling, the thunder and lightning is roaring and flashing, but, people, we have to realize that Jesus Christ is right there, going right through every step with us, and we need to not lose our focus. You need to hold on just a little bit longer and keep your faith Because, trust me, sooner or later the sun's going to shine, there is going to be a new day dawning. David said weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning, praise the Lord.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So, brothers and sisters, I'm telling you today if you are dealing with something that you may feel like just giving up and maybe it's got you tired and exhausted and you can't focus anymore. You can't deal with it anymore. My friends, I'm telling you right now you can't focus anymore, you can't deal with it anymore. My friends, I'm telling you right now go to your Father in prayer. Go somewhere alone, by yourself, get down on your knees and go to your Father in prayer. Focus on your, refocus on your faith. Talk to your Father and give it all to Him. Don't let the enemy discourage you. Pray, pray, pray and give it to God, and after that get into the Word of God. Joshua 1 and 8 says Meditate therein day and night, for then thou shalt make thy day prosperous and thou shalt have good success. Joshua 1 and 9 says Be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord, thy God, is with thee whithersoever thou goeth. That's the promises of God. Friends Now, I know your journey's probably been a long, difficult one who ain't?

Speaker 1: 19:18

And I know your faith's probably been tested we all have. But we need to keep our focus on God, and once we focus on God and on His Word, we can strive and thrive in any situation that comes our way. So it really is a lot about focus. It really is, and when you focus on God, hope and faith will remain alive in you, because you're acknowledging that God's the one in control and not the situation that you're going through. And I know this past year has been what it's been and it's not been a good one for some people, a whole lot of people, and I know things go according to plan and we need to stop and think that you know what? Just maybe maybe the things that didn't go according to plan may have not been God's plan for us. Okay, so we need to focus. You know, we need to take a look at Job.

Speaker 1: 20:08

Job's life was gone. Everything in his life was good, until the day a storm knocked his house down, killed his kids. Then his property was raided, people stole his livestock and killed his shepherds and everything that he had worked for in an instant was gone. And what did the Bible say? Everything that he had worked for in an instant was gone. And what did the Bible say Job said? The Bible says Job arose, took off his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground and worshipped. He worshipped Friends, he mourned his losses, but he still focused on God.

Speaker 1: 20:41

And that, my friends, is what we have to do when things go crazy in our life. We have to turn towards God and refocus on Him. Get our focus back on the one who sustains us. It's easy to lose focus. I know Everyday life is a struggle, but above any and all, we have to focus on Jesus. My brothers and sisters, then and here and right now, ask God to help you, focus your eyes on Him and clear Focus through the lenses of prayer and you will see clearly. You will see what God wants you to do in your walk and I encourage you to lay down your distractions and get Jesus, and you hunters will appreciate this. Get Jesus in your crosshairs of your scopes. That's your focus on your target. I just read that somewhere and I probably even said that wrong. All the people that hunters are probably gonna be laughing at me. But anyway, allow yourself to focus on God. Reset, reset, restart, refocus as many times as you need to.

Speaker 1: 21:44

God knows we're not perfect. You know we need to focus. What we focus on grows. So let's focus our mindset on God and not our problems. We should focus our mindset on God and our prayers should be our Father, who art in heaven, not our problems here on earth. People, jesus warned us in his word that we would suffer trouble in this world, but he wants us to understand that our focus should not be on the trouble around us. Our focus should be on his peace and the victory that we have in him. And when we focus on God and we focus on all that's possible through Him, all that's possible with Him, there's not a devil out of hell that could stop any of us.

Speaker 1: 22:36

We have to focus on Jesus Christ. We have to give all of our attention. I'll say it again Get God, jesus Christ, out of our peripheral vision. Put Him in front of us and follow Him and stay on that straight and narrow path with Him. It's the only way we're going to get by, because test and time is coming. People, we can see it in the news every day. Open up your Bible. It's there too. We need to refocus on God. We so need to refocus Through those spiritual lenses. We need to refocus. That's all I got on that today. I can't tell you enough of how we need to refocus ourselves and get our eyes set on Jesus Christ and my friends today.

Speaker 1: 23:25

I hope that I've said something here today that will open up your heart and your mind to rethinking, to refocusing, to redoing the things that you need to do to get yourself back into the wheel and the eyesight of God. I hope that what I've said here today has blessed you as much as it's blessed me to bring it to you. I love everybody, I pray for everybody. People, please, it's getting dangerous out there Pray, pray and refocus on God. Refocus because you're going to need it. Anyway, thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 1: 24:01

I'm going to end this with a prayer. Thank you very much for listening. I'm going to end this with a prayer. Thank you very much. Our Father, god in heaven. Lord, I ask you to let these people that hear my voice, let them open up their eyes and their hearts and their minds to that word and let them understand what that means, and let them understand what they need to do to refocus on you, to get you from out of our peripheral vision and put you in front of them, lord, and follow you, because that's the only way, that's the only help we have. I ask you, lord, to let these people feel it in their hearts and in their minds and in their souls. Let them open up their ears and their hearts and listen and listen to you.

Speaker 1: 24:41

We thank you for everything, lord, and we praise you and we honor you. We worship you today. We love you. We thank you for everything, lord, and we praise you and we honor you. We worship you today. We love you, we thank you, thank you. Thank you for our salvation and for everything that you've given us. God bless each and everybody listening, and we thank you, lord. We ask these and all things in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. We pray Amen and amen. God bless everybody.