Bobby Schuller - Where Your Focus Goes, Your Energy Flows
Here's an old-fashioned word nobody wants to hear, including me. Here's an old-fashioned word that you might have seen on a sign with the crazy guy on the corner. Or it might be a, you know, a picture of some prophet who eats grasshoppers. Or maybe it's your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving table. And it's a word that bothers so many people, but it's a word that's really, really good, and that word is repent. When we think of repent we think of hellfire and brimstone, we think of curses, we think of shame, we think of feeling really guilty and bad, and nobody wants to feel those things, although sometimes they're a little good for us.
You want other people to feel shame, you just don't want to feel it, especially when they hurt you. And here's what repent means, doesn't mean probably what you think it means. Repent means that wherever you are, you change your direction. It means that maybe you're going this way, now you're going this way. Means that life was headed that way, now life is headed this way. And maybe you're here today and you say I do need a change in my life. Things aren't going the way I thought they would go. I've not made the progress, I've not made the accomplishments, the goals, the relationships, the spiritual things, all of the things in my life that I hoped would happen, they're not happening in my life.
And maybe one of the words that we ought to look to is this word repent, which doesn't mean just weeping and sorrow and gnashing, it means, actually, excitement. Means that you find yourself in a swamp, and you're going deeper and deeper into the swamp, and then you decide one day this is stupid, I'm gonna turn and go the other way. That's what repentance is, and guess what? When you repent and you're in the swamp and you turn around, where are you? You're still in the swamp. But when you look through all the trees and the alligators and the drippiness and the humidity and the mosquitos, bright on the horizon through the trees, you see pasture, and now you've got this thing we call hope, a goal, a vision, a direction, a place to go, and now you're willing to pay a price that frankly you are already paying.
But now you're wanting to pay the price to get where you need to be to get to that kind of life, and I wanna encourage you to do that today. Can I tell you that there's a lot of things you can do in your life to save yourself, but there is nothing you can do to save yourself from sin except this, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we do that, we get like a free redo. In gaming you call it a reroll, you get to start all over fresh. You have all the experience and things that you learned along the way, but today in God's view, you can come boldly before his throne, and that is the great, good news of the gospel and what makes it so different.
All other religions say follow these rules, do the right thing, you'll get closer to God. Christianity says just lean and trust on God as a child would lean and trust on a loving father and then build your life in response to that and just do your best and forget the rest, and that's what we're gonna do today. So today I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna help you understand how to build a better life, how to build a better vision, how to get better thinking, how to achieve your goals. But if we don't get this right, making Christ the center of everything that we do and most of all being at peace with God, and we've got, then everything else I'm gonna talk about today kind of doesn't matter.
Are you at peace with God? Look, praying a prayer is a good thing to do. Going to church is a good thing to do, reading your Bible, it's all a good thing, but all you really have to do to be at peace with God is say today I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. If you make that decision today, your life will never be the same and you'll be saved and you'll know that when you get to the end of this life, a new life will begin. That's a promise. Will you make that decision today? If you make that decision, will you text me the word HOPE to the number on the screen?
I'm not gonna ask you for money or mail you anything, although I love asking people for money, don't get me wrong. I am a fund-raiser. I'm not gonna fundraise with you. I just want to pray for you and believe in your new journey, and it is a new journey. Back to the swamp. Imagine you are in a swamp. Imagine you find yourself in a rut. Your relationships aren't going well, your marriage, it's not going well with your kids or your parents or your colleagues at work. Maybe you feel like you've been betrayed. Maybe you feel like your bank account isn't where you want it to be. Maybe you feel like things just aren't going the way you want to go. You find yourself in a swamp.
In many cases when we find ourselves in the swamp, here's the first thing we don't do. Don't blame the swamp. Don't blame the swamp. But decide in this moment, maybe the steps I took on this journey brought me into this place. That's hard to do, personal responsibility, but very often when we find ourselves in the swamp, we blame the swamp. Don't blame the swamp, don't blame swampy people, don't blame the alligators, and don't blame the water. And that's what people do today, right? That's a temptation for all of us. That's what I've done, I blame inflation, I blame the economy, I blame the government, politicians, I blame my boss, I blame my employees. I blame my negative relatives, and I blame my bad hand I got dealt, and all of these things we can look at and blame, but those things are not really ever going to change.
There's always gonna be spring, summer, fall, and winter, but here's what can change: you. People today love to say people don't really change. Can I tell you something? That is false. Everybody is always changing. You've probably spent a little bit of money trying not to change, right? On your face, on your, you know, car. Who wants things to change, especially when they're going well? But the thing is everything is always changing, your body, your spirit, your mind, your thinking, your friends, your job. Everything's always changing, and you can either let it happen and that will get you to the swamp, or you can decide how it's gonna change.
And the way you decide how it's gonna change is by deciding the kind of thoughts you're going to think, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Not blaming the swamp, blaming the thinking. Not blaming the government or your boss or negative relatives, blaming your philosophy. It is your philosophy that gets you where you're going in life 90% of the time. It is your set of skills, your friends, the books you read, the prayers you pray, the things you do, these things make all the difference. All the difference. Jesus tells us, this is a very weird scripture, but there's a lot of wisdom. Jesus tells us the eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are good, your body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your body will be full of darkness. What on earth does that mean? Sounds like some Greek philosopher or something, doesn't it? Picture this, you're sitting in a house with your friend, and it's full of light, but the electricity is not on, it's just full of light. It's here in Southern California, oh, that's beautiful. And then all of a sudden as you're talking to your friend, the room goes dark, and you look up and you see this thing in California we call a skylight. It's powered by nature. It's just a glass murky dome, and it catches light, and when the sun is out, the whole house is full of light.
But when the clouds come out, it gets dark. That's very much what Jesus is saying here, that your eyes are almost like a skylight to the house that is your body, that the things you focus on, the things you look at, and we can even say the things you listen to, the books you read, the goals you have, are going to shape whether your life is light or dark. Do you feel like your life is kind of dark right now? Do you feel like you don't have a lot of hope? Do you feel like you don't know where you're going? Do you feel like you could be in a different place? One place you can start by changing is changing the skylight, looking at what am I letting in here?
It's amazing the things that really aren't a big deal all by themselves but compound. The language that our friends use, I think, oh, that's not a big deal. Music about killing people and selling drugs and swearing and sexual stuff, that's not a big deal. Movies we watch, that's not a big deal. And with the lack of goals and all of a sudden all of it, that's not a big deal, that's not a big deal, that's not a big deal until a bunch of things that are not a little big deal become a huge deal in our life, and we wonder what is going on. And it's so strange how when we turn just one of these things around, we can see how letting good in makes all the difference.
Wonderful guy, Les Brown, preached at the Crystal Cathedral when I was there years ago. An amazing story he had. He's 77 years old. He talked about how as a child, he was a African-American guy and 77 years ago that was a lot. And grew up in a very poor family, was adopted, was called borderline mentally retarded and wasn't able to learn in school. And he had this dream to buy his mom a house. He used to go with her to these big beautiful houses, and she would clean and cook for them and then take home the leftovers. And he would say, "Mom, why can't we live in a house like this"? And she said, "It's just not the way it is, son". And he said to her, "Mom, one day I want to buy you a house like this".
And everyone said, including his mom, you will never get a house like this. If you listen to things like that, you'll never get a house like this, you'll never achieve anything, you'll never do anything with your life, because of your race, because of your upbringing, because of what an educator said about your thinking, because your grades were bad. You'll never do anything with your life. How many people feel that way? And the answer is very many people listen to that. They are allowing darkness through the skylight of their life, and their whole life is full of darkness. You can listen to that, or you can just say hogwash. Hogwash. I can do and be anyone and anything I want if I do it with the Lord.
Did Jesus say all things are possible to those who believe? Did he? The answer is yes. Not only are they possible, he wants us to see those possibilities and believe in those possibilities and live for them. And it was Les Brown who said this great quote that helped him, I heard it in a song, actually. It says where your focus goes, your energy flows. Where your focus goes, your energy flows. What we think about all day long is going to make a difference on how we feel. You say, I'm out of energy. Maybe you're focusing on things that are not good for you, maybe. This is your friend, Bobby, talking.
I don't know, but maybe if you begin to focus on the Lord and personal development, where I want to be in life, and positive things, whatever, as the Apostle Paul says, true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy. If I focus on these things, I am letting light inside, and in that way I become the light of the world. You are the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Isn't that amazing that Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior of the world didn't say in this passage, I am the light of the world, he said what? You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. The world needs you. But to be a light, we have to get the light in for the light to go out.
If you put junk in, trash will go out. You put junk in, trash will go out. If you put light in, light will come out, success will come out, victory, opportunity, good friendships, good relationships, the whole kit and caboodle. You get heaven in, you get heaven out. That's it. And as Jesus said, heaven is what? Within you. What if that's true? You say heaven's not in me. Well, maybe we can get heaven in you today. Can we get heaven in you today? Yes we can. Yes we can. And the way we get Heaven in you is by changing our thinking. Now, this is what Paul tells us to do. Paul is an amazing man. If you haven't heard of him, he wrote many of the books in the New Testament.
One of the books that he wrote is Philippians. The book of Philippians is called the epistle of joy. It's a book about joy, about how to be a joyful, happy person. And guess where Paul was when he wrote this epistle. He was in this place, a dark, dungy cell. Look at that place. I know it's 2,000 years old, but can we all just agree that prison is bad today, but prison was probably worse 2,000 years ago? You sleep on some hay. I don't know what the toilet situation was. It wasn't good. And yet Paul, who was there, was talking about how joyful he was. How joyful he was.
Why was he joyful? Well, when Hannah read the scripture today from Philippians chapter 3, we see that the joy was set before him because he had a goal, the goal, the goal that was before him. Let's let's look at this together, Philippians chapter 3 verse 12, "Not that I've already obtained all this or already arrived in my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind", everybody say "forget what's behind".
Can you control the past? You cannot control the past. You can't change the past. You can't do anything about it. But you can press on. You can just forget it and do what? Strain toward what is ahead and press toward a goal to win the prize for which God has called me Heavenward in Jesus Christ. Can we just say today Paul was paying a big price? He was in prison, he was maybe sick, he'd been, I mean, Paul, beyond prison was shipwrecked, beaten, rejected, lied about, had churches that he planted and poured into stolen from him, people betrayed him, and yet here he is full of joy. Did Paul fake it? That's a good question. Did Paul Fake it? I think the answer is no.
I think Paul was actually a joyful, you know, joy means you laugh sometimes. Joy means you're smiling. Joy means there's stuff on your face that can be like, wow, he's pretty happy for being in a prison. That's a pretty happy guy. So was Paul faking it? The answer is no. What did Paul have that we need today? He had a goal, he had a vision, he had a reason to get up in the morning. He was paying a price, but for Paul it was worth it. If the prize is clear, the price is worth it. If you can see where you're going, you'll be willing to pay the price. This is the power of a goal-oriented life. You only become as big as your biggest goal. You only become as big as your biggest goal.
So for a moment here, we begin to understand our philosophy, or begin to understand how important or how much our daily thoughts and disciplines are affecting our outside life. How by what we consume and what we think about is a great indicator of what our future is going to be like. Your present thoughts are gonna dictate your future. So think about what you think about. Sounds like Dr. Seuss, doesn't it? Think about what you think about. You go to the dentist sometimes to get your teeth cleaned, and you go to the mechanic sometimes to get a tune-up on your car.
Sometimes it's maybe every six months or so, we ought to take a look at our thoughts and tune them up. We're gonna do that today, because we ought to ask what kind of life are my thoughts creating? If you think about your life and where it is right now, your philosophy is perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting, your way of thinking, the way you spend your free time, the patterns you keep in your life, they're all perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting. So here's three ways you can tune up your thinking that are gonna lead to more victory in your life.
Here's the number one thing, first thing: focus... let me ask you a question first. What do most people focus on? Do they focus on what they can control, or what they can't control? Like when you're obsessing, and you're turning and tossing at night, are you thinking about what you can control or what you cannot control? What you cannot. Yeah, you're thinking about politics, you're thinking about news and inflation, you're thinking about rumors at your job or your school, you're thinking about what did my boyfriend mean when he texted that? What did my girlfriend, she was talking to that guy a little longer than I wanted her to. Or you're thinking about where your kids are going overseas or what's happened with your parents' health.
These are the things that we spend a lot of time thinking about, and where your focus goes, your energy flows. What happens when we pour our focus into things we can't control? We just feel tired. If you feel tired, you're not gonna be able to do a lot for God. So number one is focus on what you can control. Maybe you were just told that, you know, you have some sickness or almost worse that you have someone you love who's sick. How can I control that? Maybe you just found out one of your parents is sick or your spouse is sick or one of your kids is sick. You know, my son has a brain disease, and it's a constant thing.
So what do we do? I can't control that. But here's what I can control. I can go to the doctor appointments. Here's what I can control. I can pray about it. Here's what I can control. I can become the kind of dad, kind of husband, kind of son, and the kind of friend that the people I love need. I can stop focusing on what I can't control, and I can focus on what I can control, do healthy things today, become a healthier person. In our relationships, you know, there's lots of things you can't control. Like everyone, there's no one you can control except who? Except me. If you got a pen, write this down: I cannot control my spouse. You can try, you can try, but you can't control your spouse.
Here's a bad goal, be married to the best spouse ever. Here's a good goal, become the best spouse ever. You say you're working on that, I wanna be the best spouse ever, but they're not very good. Well, that's not your goal. Your goal is not to be married to the best best ever, your goal is to be the best spouse ever. And you give it about six months, right? When you plant in spring, it takes about six months for harvest to come. Give it about six months, and you'll start to see your spouse will change if you change. It's not going to get better until you get better.
The only thing you can control is you. You want to do better in dating, become more attractive. And I don't mean just the...I mean become a desirable person. You want to get better with money, learn the skills that draw economic things to you. There's a book for that, there's a YouTube video for that, there's a podcast for that. Listen to the sermons, make the changes, pray the prayers, become the person that brings those things into your life. Where your focus goes, your energy flows.
Number two, focus, not on what you've lost, focus on what you have. Focus on what you have. Here is something Dr. Schuller taught me, always look at what you have left, never at what you have lost. Easier said than done, join the team. We're all human. We all make these mistakes. The reason I'm so good at preaching on this stuff is I'm so bad at doing it. You know, this is the thought thing. It takes a constant vigilance to make sure that I'm focusing not on what I've lost, but what I have. To focus not on what I can't control, but what I can control. Here's something all of you have, hopefully.
Let me ask you a question. Are you alive? Are you? Well, barely. Hey, I'll take barely over no. Barely, I can work with barely. You're mostly dead, a little Princess Bride there, right? Mostly dead. You're still a little alive, or you're a lot alive, but you're alive. You've got some time. Maybe it's a little time, maybe it's a lot of time, but that's more time than 99% of human beings who've ever lived. A lot, there's billions and billions of people who have lived, but most of them are dead, you're alive, congratulations. That means that you live in a world full of opportunity and possibility, and if you set... That's something else you have. Yeah, it's ethereal, it's philosophical, it's theoretical, but you have the freedom to make of your life and the time you have left what you want of it.
And boy, if you have Christ, you have everything. People say life is short, the Christian says no it's not, life is forever, forever. And if you know the Lord, you don't have to worry about it. Look, we make it too complicated. If you're friends with Jesus, he's gonna let you in. It's just that simple. You don't have to get everything right. If you know the Lord, and the Lord knows you, he'll say well done, come on in. More importantly, our goal is not to just get to heaven when we die, it's to get heaven in us now so we can be a light in the dark world. Let the light in through the window.
So number one, focus on what you can control. Number two, focus on what you have, not what you've lost. And number three, focus on the solution, not the problem. Can I just tell you that, yeah, you might have some short-term solutions and problems, but over the long term the solution for your life is Christ in you? That is the solution. You know, first century Christians were not called Christians, they were called disciples. A disciple is someone who practices disciplines. That's where the word comes from. Little disciplines every day to make a big difference. The solution is to work hard on you. Work harder on you than anything else in the world.
Every day do a little bit of work to become a better version of you, to become more like Christ, to take the scriptures seriously, to take the wisdom given to you by your parents and your grandparents and the people you admire and your mentors to really live it out, to have a clear picture of who you want to become, and devote all your thought and all of your focus into that. Where your focus goes, your energy flows. If you focus on personal development, you're gonna be like recycling and building a lot of energy in you.
There's a theist and there's a Christian, there's a difference. Most Americans are theists, they believe in God. If I'm in a foxhole, God help me and a Christian will do that too. I promise, if you're a Christian in a foxhole, you're gonna be praying. But a Christian takes it a step further. The Christian believes that God is in me. It's this word theologically we call incarnation. If you speak Spanish, it literally means to put meat on something, in carne, right? To put flesh on something. Means that the holy spirit, we become a body in a way, it's not that you're God or I'm God, we're separated, but that we become full of his spirit and full of his power.
And so for the theist says God help me and then hopes that something lucky happens. That's what a theist does. But a Christian says God help me, and God responds and says, okay, let's go do it. When, you know, the Jewish people and Hebrew people asked God to set them free from Pharaoh, God didn't just part the skies and talk to Pharaoh. He did some work with a guy named Moses and Aaron. And when Goliath came before the armies of Israel, David didn't say, God, please slay that giant. No, he said, Lord, let's go do it together. And when God called the people of Israel into the promised land and there were giants in the land, Joseph didn't say, Lord, please strike them dead with lightning. No, God said let's go in together and slay some giants.
This is the way that God does things. He likes to do things with you. And thank goodness for that. Thank goodness for that. Because we all want to have a purpose and a reason in life. Become a better version of you and life will get better. A man says I want my car to be powerful. So I press on the gas as hard as I can. That's not gonna make your car more powerful, it'll just give your car more gas. If you need a more powerful car, you need powerful parts. You need the kind of parts that make your car faster.
If you want a more powerful life, you need more powerful parts. You need powerful ideas, powerful books, powerful friends. You need to have powerful disciplines. You need to see that life is not huge, mega events, it's small, little things. The devotion to a kind of life. Will you stop saying to God, Lord, fix everything, and you instead say, Lord, fix me. Lord, fix me, fix me. Don't ask the Lord to make life easy, ask him to make you better. Don't ask the Lord to make life less scary, ask him to give you more courage. Don't ask the Lord to make life less confusing, ask him to give you more knowledge and understanding of the world.
Don't ask him to change the world, ask him to change you, and you'll change the world. That changes everything. And that's the good news. It won't get better until you get better, my friend. So you can either take despair at that, because you're like, I cannot get better. My friend, you can, you can. You can become all that you set your mind to. It's almost always gonna happen in your free time. Use your free time to become the kind of person you want to be. Use your free time to create the kind of life you want rather than escape the life you have.
And here's the last thing I learned from my Grandpa Schuller, don't get through the day, get from the day. Don't get through the day, get from the day. The day is full of interesting people and opportunities, beautiful things, amazing experiences. Don't waste a day by sleeping in. Don't get through a day, get from a day.
Every day has a gift made available to make you a more godly, more awesome, more powerful, and a more interesting and attractive person. And you can do all those things, not just tomorrow, not just the next day, not just a month from now, you can do those things today. That's good news. When I used to visit my Grandpa Schuller's house, everything always happened in the kitchen for some weird reason. I think it's where the food was. You'd always enter and exit the house through the kitchen, and every time I left the house I'd always make the same stupid mistake.
I would say, bye grandpa, have a great day, and he would say, "No"! And then freeze, you know, like a deer in headlights, you'd turn and look, and he'd say, "Make it a great day". And I "said, All right, grandpa, I will. I'll make it a great day". You can make it a great day today. You don't have to get through the day, you can get from the day. You can make it the kind of day you want it to be.
Here's something you can do at the end of every day before you go to bed, you lay down in bed and you rest your eyes, you take some deep breaths, make sure your phone has gone, in another room, just don't even have it, and pray. Ask the Lord to show you your day and just do like a football rewind of your whole day, you know? Going from beginning to end, the people you met, the things you learned, the positive and negative experiences you had, your high, your low, things like that. Think through the day, and you will get so much more out of your day. You'll carry the previous day into your next day, and you'll see things will get better.
Lord, we ask it in Jesus's name to give us a kind of focus, whatever is good and noble and praiseworthy and pure and excellent, all of these things. We want to see those things. Lord, we ask that you develop us into the kind of people you want us to be. Thank you, God, that we always change. And we choose today to change into the people you want us to be. Lord, we love you, and we thank you. It's in Christ's name we pray. All God's people said amen.