Student Leadership 201: FocusSample

 Focus On The Season You’re In

Do you ever wish you could fast-forward your life? Maybe you’re counting down the days until you get your driver's license or leave for college. Or maybe you’re walking through something really painful and you can’t wait for the day when life isn’t so hard. 

Sometimes the thing that threatens our focus isn’t someone else’s story, but a season of life that we would rather skip because it’s boring or difficult. We focus on the future so much that we actually forfeit the present. 

Paul understood this tension because Paul wrote several books of the Bible from jail. Yes, you read that right. The same guy who spent the first half of his life persecuting Christians ended up in prison multiple times for preaching about Jesus. How’s that for a twist of irony? 

In Acts 16, Paul and his buddy, Silas, were stripped of their clothes, beaten, and thrown into prison for casting an evil spirit out of a girl. This would probably be the point in the story where most of us would want to hit fast-forward. But Paul and Silas understood the power of focus, so they didn’t throw a pity party — they threw a praise party! 

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 

Paul and Silas were in a place they didn’t want to be, but when they started worshiping the prisoners around them stopped to listen.

An earthquake shook the prison that night and as a result, all the prison doors were opened and everyone’s chains fell off. But Paul and Silas didn’t rush out of the prison. They stayed where they were and as a result, a jailer and his entire family believed in the Lord. 

Their work wasn’t waiting outside the prison walls — their opportunity was in the very place they didn’t want to be — and because they didn’t rush out of the prison and onto bigger and better things as soon as the doors flew open, an entire family experienced salvation. 

Don’t rush out of the season you’re in and miss all God wants to do through you right where you are. Worship where you are. Lead where you are, whether it’s in the lunchroom or in your living room. 

How are you making the most of the season you’re in right now? Are you open to how God wants to use you right where you are?