One Decision That Makes Your Problems Powerless

• Friends, if I could sit with you tonight and we could speak heart-to-heart, I believe I would begin with this simple yet profound truth. The most critical battle you will ever face is not with the circumstance that troubles you so, not with the sickness in the body, not with the lack in the bank account, not with the heartache in your home.
• No, the most critical battle is for the focus of your soul. It is fought on the narrow ground of your attention. You see what you focus on you empower. It is a spiritual law as real and as fixed as the law of gravity. Your focus is not a passive glance. It is a powerful force. It is the lens through which you view your world.
• And whatever you place at the center of that lens becomes magnified. It grows in size and significance until it dominates your entire field of vision. Let me ask you, what is your attention tonight? Is it the diagnosis the doctor gave? Is it the bill you cannot pay? Is it the betrayal that cut you so deep? I can see it in your eyes.
• I can feel it in this room. The weight of it? The sheer magnitude of the thing that has captured your gaze. And because you have looked at it and looked at it and looked at it, it has grown. It has swollen in the darkness of your worry. It has taken on a voice that shouts over every whisper of hope.
• The problem has become powerful because you have given it your power. You have fed it with your fear, watered it with your anxiety, and breathed life into it with every rehearsed conversation in your mind. But oh, can I tell you about a different kind of focus? The enemy of your soul wants nothing more than to keep that lens glued to the storm, to the waves crashing over the sides of your little boat.
• He wants you counting the water, measuring the wind, forecasting your own demise. Because as long as you are focused on the storm, you will never see the one who is standing in the boat with you. You will never hear his voice above the gale. The power of the problem lies in its ability to monopolize your sight and your sound.