We all have times when we need our focus directed back to the Lord. We are creatures cursed with the Adamic curse of a tendency toward distraction. This Adamic nature, with its tendency toward distraction, makes it difficult even for those who desire to walk with God. Though they may have a Word from God and believe it, they often become like the shallow soil where a little persecution, a few thorns, and the cares of life cause any growth to wither (Matthew 13:5–7, 20–22).
If you study the men in the Scriptures who walked with God through the years, you notice that they had something in common. They overcame distractions and kept their focus fixed on the Lord. Caleb, who was over eighty years old when the Israelites conquered the Canaanites, said to Joshua, “I have wholly followed the Lord, my God. Therefore, give me this mountain that the Lord promised me” (Joshua 14:6–12). Caleb had gone through the hard times in the wilderness. He had seen the giants, but he had not wavered. As he watched one generation die in the wilderness, he probably helped to train the younger generation—those who were twenty years old and under when they left Egypt—who would now go in and take the land (Numbers 14:26–31). Caleb had kept his focus fixed upon the Lord. At the age of eighty-five, only he and Joshua remained out of the first generation.
Joshua had that same focus on the Lord as he prepared to cross the Jordan after Moses’ death. God instructed him, “This book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night. Then you will make your way prosperous and you will have success” (Joshua 1:8). He was a general who did not study the principles and tactics of warfare. Instead, he heard what God said and concentrated on that. Then, in an amazing way, God gave him the wisdom to win. What made these two men, Caleb and Joshua, so distinctive that they stood when other men fell? They fixed their gaze upon the Lord and on what He had said.
There are times when all of us encounter distractions which seem to be overwhelming. When Peter was trying to walk on water, he saw the boisterous winds and he wavered a little. In that moment, he began to sink because he got his eyes off the Lord (Matthew 14:28–30). On the other hand, Paul did not allow himself to be distracted. At the time of his trial, when everything was coming against him, he said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19). David, as he was prevailing over his enemies, sang a psalm to his God, “My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed on Thee” (Psalm 57:7). These men had a focus upon the Lord. When they wavered from it, they began to falter. But when they set their focus upon the Lord with what the Scriptures call a steadfastness (I Corinthians 15:58; Colossians 2:5), without wavering, then they prevailed (Hebrews 10:23). This fact that they wholly followed the Lord is important.
If our focus is not on the Lord and His Word, we see other things that could cause us to waver. It is easy to become disappointed in other people. Whether that disappointment is justifiable or unjustified does not make any difference. You could hear a rumor; but whether the rumor is a lie or the truth is not really the issue. What is important is what happens within you when your focus is not on the Lord and His Word, and you focus on other things.
Do you remember that Will Rogers often said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” In this day, if all we know is what we read in the papers, we will be confused and misinformed. When I do read the newspapers, I make a practice of reading the Scriptures first and trying to keep the right focus. The news media today are great molders of human thoughts and ideas. If you read only the newspapers, you will see much that is confusion and what somebody else wants you to believe and think.
Satan’s tactics are changing; they are more sophisticated today than they were in the past. In the early days of the Reformation, heretics were burned at the stake for owning a Bible. You would not be burned at the stake for owning a Bible now. Instead, we see new translations of the Bible in which the Scriptures have been loosely paraphrased and worked over to such an extent that little of the pure truth remains. No longer do men cut the heart out of a believer who has the Word; now they just cut the heart out of the Scriptures that he reads. As sincere believers, let us desire the pure Word; let us be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord (I Peter 2:2; I Corinthians 15:58). That steadfastness will come only as we have a focus on the Lord Jesus Christ.
In his Epistle, James wrote about being steadfast even when facing various trials. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials (he urges us to consider it all joy, but there is a reason for it), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. James 1:2–3. The King James Version says “patience.” But “patience” is too passive a word; it has changed its meaning since 1611 when the King James Version was printed. “Endurance” is a better word. You do not win races with patience; you win them with endurance. If you were to get into a boxing ring with an opponent and be patient, you would soon see the difference between patience and endurance. A little bit of endurance would give quite a different outcome to the whole match. When your faith is tested, it produces an endurance. It is not enough to believe a promise for the moment. Your faith in that promise must have an endurance to it.
And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Verse 4. What God does in your life comes to perfection because of the constant testings which you endure as you enter into a walk with God. You may think, “That sounds easy, but I just do not understand it. It is beyond my comprehension how God would tell me to count it all joy because of these testings. I cannot see how these testings of my faith will produce an endurance, and then after a while I will become perfect and lack nothing. I just cannot understand that!”
If you cannot understand what James is saying, read the next verse. It gives you an answer: But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. Verse 5. If you ask the Lord, He will give you wisdom to understand what He is doing in your life. Isn’t it marvelous when you walk with the Lord without confusion? Then you know what He is doing in your life, you know the general direction you are going, and the objectives He has for you.
In the early days of this move of God, I worked part-time as a carpenter’s helper. The carpenter would mark a board and say, “Saw it there.” After I had sawed that board, he would take it and bring another one and say, “Saw this.” It became very frustrating to me because I did not know what we were making or how the boards were being used. I did not mind sawing them, but I wanted to know why I was sawing them and what we were building. The end result was that the carpenter used those boards to construct a garage. But as I was sawing them, I had no idea that he was going to eventually build a garage with them. After a day or two of doing nothing but sawing boards, I said, “I cannot endure this any longer. I can stand the work, but the confusion of not knowing why I am doing it is too frustrating.”
How can we apply this to our walk with God? We get a Word and that Word tells us what God is working in our life. But then He puts us in various situations that are confusing to us because we do not see the purpose of them. We cannot see that we are doing anything constructive. Those who come to Shiloh for training may think, “Why am I here? Am I just going in a circle? I do not seem to be doing much that will make me a prophet.” Or you may say, “Why am I in this church? Why do I come here?” You are going through experiences which God is ordering because He has a plan and a purpose for you. “Yes, I understand that God has a plan for my life; I have prophecies over me. But it is this day-to-day confusion in experience after experience, in relationship after relationship, that I cannot understand.”
James assures us that we can ask God for wisdom. We can pray, “I lack wisdom, Lord. But I am going to believe, without any wavering, that You will explain to me and show me why I am going through all of these unexplainable experiences.” He may respond, “Son, look in Romans 8:28 and you will get your answer.” This verse reminds us that all things work together for good to those who love God. What if He causes everything in your life to “blow up”? God often seems to take the difficult way to accomplish His purpose. But after you have gone through that difficult way and you look back, you will see that actually it was the easiest way that good could have happened to you. If any man asks God for wisdom, He gives it generously and without reproach. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. James 1:6–7.
These verses from James chapter 1 show the difference between wavering and steadfastness. It is natural for the human heart to waver. Therefore, God puts us through many experiences so that we will become steadfast and fixed in our focus. As He tests our faith, it produces endurance (verse 3). Then He works with us until that endurance brings forth a perfection (verse 4). What is perfection? Perfection is the end product of faith that is consistently manifested without wavering (Kingdom Proverb). You may have thought that perfection was finally reaching a place or a level where you do not make any mistakes and you know all the answers. However, the perfection that James is talking about is a maturity that simply believes God continuously, without wavering. The testing of your faith produces endurance, and that endurance has a perfect result: You will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. A man who has a focus of faith on God, and does not waver in it, has the key to the Kingdom of God with all of its fullness.
The main difficulty with a message like this is the fact that you must face it on Monday morning, realizing that it is still the truth. Then you may feel that the truth is very expensive. The book of Proverbs says, “Buy the truth and sell it not” (Proverbs 23:23).
Much of the book of James, as well as Peter’s Epistles and the book of Hebrews, emphasizes the importance of perseverance. We are urged to hang on and persevere, to lay hold of the thing that God has for us and not let go of it. James wrote: Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. James 1:12. In the fourth chapter, James exhorts us: Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:7–8. Get rid of that vacillation. We cannot have a wavering spirit. That is what destroys people.
I am persuaded that it is very much in God’s will that we go through what look like pointless circumstances, aimless driftings, experiences that seem to have no meaning in our life. It is out of these experiences and the seemingly useless periods of time in our lives that we come into the kind of aggressive faith that God can use.
The life of Moses is an illustration of this. The name Mosheh means “drawn out.” Pharaoh’s daughter had pulled him out of the river where he was lying in a little ark of bulrushes (Exodus 2:3–10). Moses loved God very much, and he was called of God to deliver the children of Israel out of Egypt. He was to be the savior and the deliverer of his people. One day when he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. The next day, upon discovering two Israelites fighting, he admonished them to stop, saying, “You are brothers.” They replied, “What are you going to do? Will you kill us and bury us in the sand as you did the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:11–14.) Fearing Pharaoh’s wrath, Moses decided to run for it. He went to the backside of the desert (Exodus 2:15; 3:1) where he stayed for forty years. That is a long time to be in the desert tending sheep!
While he was there, Moses married one of Jethro’s daughters and she tended sheep too (Exodus 2:16–21). Here was the savior of the whole Israelite nation out in the desert pasturing a flock of sheep. In the natural, we might think, “Forty years of that! What a pointless waste of manpower to have a prophet of God out there.” Yet do you realize that some of your most beneficial times are those times which you thought were wasted? God was putting you through something and teaching you for the time ahead when He would bring you forth.
While in Egypt, Moses probably heard how God had talked to Abraham. He believed that God had talked to his ancestor four hundred years before; but now, after forty years in the desert, he was ready to listen and hear God’s voice himself. Moses saw a burning bush and he heard a voice telling him to take his shoes off because he was standing on holy ground (Exodus 3:1–5). By that time, he had unlearned enough of the wisdom of Egypt to be able to listen to God’s voice and believe it. He had a simple faith that believed God could talk to him out of a brushfire.
We too must learn the voice of God. How will He talk to us? What will He say? You may wonder, “What will come out of all the persecution, the trials, and the difficult circumstances we are going through?” We will learn His voice. We will wholly follow Him, doing what He tells us to do. We will accept that the dealings of the Lord are producing a people who will be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, with a right focus in their heart (I Corinthians 15:58).
James tells us, Behold, we count those blessed who endured. At the culmination of this age, we will see that the man who is most blessed is the one who has had such a focus on the Lord and upon His Word that he has endured without wavering. He is still there. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. James 5:11. The man who endures is like Job. The endurance of his faith brings him through; it results in his perfection. He partakes of the promises given to the overcomers in the book of Revelation (Revelation 2:7, 26; 3:5, 21).
This message belongs to people who have had circumstances distract them, gossip upset them, terrible things happen to them, or relationships let them down. It is for people who get discouraged, who find themselves saying, like the psalmist, “My feet had well nigh slipped when I considered the arrogance and prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:2–3). It belongs to people who have never really had a Word from God and who are tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine which comes along (Ephesians 4:14).
Could it possibly belong also to people who have had a Word from the Lord, and have set their hearts upon it? Surely they would never waver or draw back, would they? I hope you sense the sarcasm here. We all know that this message really belongs to everyone. We all have times when we allow our focus to wander and we need to direct it back to the Lord. Therefore we should often exhort one another, “Cast not away your confidence, which has a great recompense of reward. We have need of endurance. After we have done the will of God, we will inherit the promise” (Hebrews 10:35–36).
Hebrews also exhorts us, Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.… For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:1b–3. With our focus on the Lord and on His Word, let us embrace the faith which says, “I am going to be steadfast and immovable. I will go through the dealings that God has for me. I will hang on lest I get hung up.”