A Journey to God

Learning to Refocus on God When Our Desires Take Over

It’s time to refocus on God.

There are so many things that can quietly and subtly pull our focus away from Him. When we think about being “out of focus,” we often assume it only refers to the noise of the world trying to drown out God’s voice in our lives. But today, I want to talk about another kind of distraction one that is much more silent and, sometimes, more dangerous.

This distraction comes when we have desires, petitions, or blessings we are longing to receive from the Lord.

You might be asking yourself, How can I be out of focus if I am praying and seeking God’s face?

From my own experience, I want to share that yes it is possible to lose focus even while praying for the desires of your heart. Let me explain.

We serve a powerful Christ, the God who makes the impossible possible. But the issue is not His power; the issue is our posture. There are moments of intimacy with God where we say, “Lord, You have control. Do it however You want,” yet deep inside, we still want to hold the reins of what we are asking for.

Without realizing it, even while crying out to God, we become unfocused. In prayer we say one thing, but in our daily actions and decisions we reveal something completely different. We shift our eyes away from God’s sovereignty and unknowingly try to “help” God with our own strength, plans, and timing.

Our hearts long for blessings, answers, and breakthroughs but what if instead we chose to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ, allowing Him to have absolute control over the situation?

Many times, we pray with faith, but in our minds we begin to imagine how God should act. We start moving according to our emotions, and little by little we confuse the voice of God with the voice of our feelings. This is why it is so necessary and so important to ask God for wisdom and spiritual discernment. We need discernment so that in the middle of our crying out, our trials, and our circumstances, we can truly release everything into His hands and learn to rest in Him.

If I’m being honest, letting go is hard even as Christians. Not because God is incapable, but because our humanity wants things to happen quickly. We forget that our Heavenly Father does desire to bless us in every area of our lives, but we often resist the preparation and the process that comes before the blessing.

It’s easy to say, “Lord, take control and do as You please,” but when God actually takes control, the picture often looks completely different from what we imagined. Sometimes it even feels like everything is falling apart. Yet, even when we cannot see it, God is working behind the scenes in our favor.

The reality is that we are used to being in control making decisions based on what seems best to us. But as children of God, we must understand that before He blesses us, He prepares us. Sadly, when we are in the middle of the process, we often fail to recognize the season we are in. We become anxious, impatient, and disappointed because we assume that since we prayed, God should act quickly and according to our expectations.

But God never asked us to dictate how He will bless us.

He invites us to rest in Him to live in the peace that only He can give, the peace that surpasses all understanding, guarding our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. A peace that keeps us from doubting, from becoming anxious, and from trying to take back control of what we already placed in His hands.

Refocusing on God means trusting Him completely not just with our prayers, but with our surrender.