It’s that time of year again when tennis takes over the television sets with the Australian Open. We’ve been watching bits and pieces of the tennis, according to what else we’re doing, who is playing and the time the match is on.
Sometimes it’s been over lunch, other times at night, so long as it’s not starting at around midnight and finishing at 4.33 like the recent Hewitt/ Baghdatis match. Much as I would have liked to watch it, it was simply too late.
Earlier in the evening we had been watching the Federer/Tipsarevic match. The thing that strikes me with the top tennis players is their mental toughness. They seem to be able to focus and really keep their minds on the job at hand. Sometimes all it takes is a few moments lapse and the game starts to slip as the player’s opponent sense the shift in concentration and cranks their own game up a gear.
It’s not much different for the Christian. We need to keep our minds focused on who we are and what we should be doing. We are followers of Jesus and ambassadors for Him. It is so easy to lose our focus and become sidetracked from our prime objective. We need to ‘take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ’, 2 Corinthians 10:5. This is especially true in times of prayer. Sometimes it is so easy for the mind to get sidetracked and wander off at tangents, like what we else we have to do the rest of the day or other things, which might be important but which take our focus away from where it should be.
Satan loves to distract us when we are talking to God so, like those tennis players, we need to keep our focus and our mind fixed on what we are doing. For this reason I write my prayers down. The act of writing them down keeps my mind from wandering. It also provides a record of what I have prayed so I can see when and how prayers are answered. For me it’s a tool to help me take my thoughts captive to Christ. Why don’t you try it, if you have never done this before? You might find it a helpful tool.
Bible verses from the New International Version
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