How To Maintain Focus in a World of Swirling Distraction

Jesus says, “When you pray, enter into your closet and close the door.”

Pray

This cannot “go without saying” because some people have stopped praying, measured down their intensity in intercession, or simply redefined intercession as “intimacy” in a way that leaves them lying around emoting instead of engaging. You gotta pray! You gotta say something! You gotta vocalize what you are processing in the form of declaration, petition, pregnancy, and purpose!

Beware the modern tendency to make your quiet time so quiet that you never actually pray. Avoid the immature and irresponsible “I just want to spend time with Jesus” movement if the end product is that you become a flabby, surface slush, indulgent slug substituting devotionalization for demonstration!

Experiencing worship isn’t the same as releasing worship. Once you get up the mountain, you are positioned to function on the mountain. Something say! Pray! Enough with the substitution of intimacy for pregnancy! Stop taking spiritual birth control, get pregnant and produce purpose!

You gotta pray. “People should be praying all the time and not lose their passion!”

Enter the Closet

When people built homes in Jesus’ time, they began with the most inner place of greatest security, constructing a place to store their valuables, a closet. This vault was the place where Jesus identifies your privacy. The “closet” is the place where all your most valuable possessions are stored, so get in there with your stuff and pray.

Surrounded by your most precious things, make your prayers more precious than what you possess.

Get into the closet. That is not easy! Life demands your attention. Duty demands your energy. People demand your time. Things crowd your life. Electronics call to you from every room, pocket, shelf, and counter top. Even your worship favorites can become a distraction when they substitute enjoyment for worship and intercession.

The closet may be literal or metaphoric, but Jesus basically says, “Prayer is more precious than all your guarded possessions. Get in there and set proper priorities.”

Close the Door

This the really tough part. Focus. Moving from soul-first to SpiritFirst so that you are not reacting to what is going on around you but rising up into what is going on in heaven. You go up into the circumstances around the Throne of God, seated with Jesus in the heavenlies, then you bring God’s agenda, priorities, and purposes into your circumstances through intercession, standing between heaven and earth with kingdom keys, authorized to represent God and your assignments in the place of provision, power, perfection, and possibility.

Shut that door! Start with your spirit, not your emotions, mind, and will. Start with your spirit and allow your surrendered will to open your mind to revelation, so your emotions experience God’s passion more than your own passion.

Shut that door! Cast your cares upon Him so He can do the caring for you. Let it go! Shake it off! Shut it down! Get into the your secret place so you can enter into His secret Place!