Your Distraction Is Playing You // Death To Distraction: Week 8

Focus Keywords: death to distraction, focus on Jesus, divine destiny, spiritual vision, Samson and Delilah, overcoming addiction, breaking cycles, Transformation Church, Michael Todd sermon, Hebrews 12:1

This summary and rewrite draws on Pastor Michael Todd’s message, “Your Distraction Is Playing You // Death To Distraction: Week 8,” delivered at Transformation Church. The core theme is the urgent need for believers to achieve a higher level of focus to fulfill their divine calling, emphasizing that distraction is not merely a nuisance but a “destiny killer”.

The message concludes an eight-week series, demanding that individuals confront the things that are actively “playing” or abusing them.

Focus: The Foundation of Divine Priority

The overarching requirement for believers is focus. Many people are too distracted to achieve the destiny God has called them to.

• God’s Purpose for Focus: God doesn’t command focus just to make you forget responsibilities like bills, relationships, or children. Instead, focusing on Him allows Him to “give you priority of how to focus, where to focus, when to focus”. He directs the path and provides instructions necessary for the intended end.
• The Scripture of Focus: The mandate to focus is rooted in Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every weight or everything that hinders us, especially sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race that God has marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith”.
• Fixing your eyes on Jesus provides the necessary “faith to focus”.

Distraction Defined: Abuse in Disguise

Distraction is characterized as something that uses you in an abnormal way, leading to abuse. It is often the thing people run to when they are losing or feeling vulnerable. Distractions can take many forms:

• Things and People: A TV show, a person, a career path, or even one’s own children can become a distraction from God’s purpose.
• Obsessions: Obsession with a title, a neighborhood, the number of likes/follows, or the need for people to like you are all identified as distractions that prevent fulfillment of destiny.
• The Enemy’s Plan: The purpose of distraction is to cause believers to lose the power God has placed within them to reach their destiny, often without even realizing it.

The speaker shares a personal story of being “played” by a scam involving expensive shoes, using the incident to illustrate the necessary realization: “I had to come to the realization that I was getting played”. If one fails to acknowledge that a distraction is abusing them, their confidence will suffer and they may forget the things God told them.

The Danger of Comfort: Samson’s Example

The life of Samson provides a biblical precedent for the catastrophic consequences of entertaining a distraction.

• Samson and Delilah: Samson, a Nazarite dedicated to God from birth (meaning he could not cut his hair, drink strong drink, or touch anything dead), played with the thing that could kill him. He began to love what he was supposed to conquer.
• The Power Source Revealed: Delilah (representing distraction) persisted until Samson finally revealed the secret of his strength—his uncut hair.
• Loss in Comfort: Distraction found the truth of what takes away power. Delilah lulled Samson to sleep with his head in her lap (a posture of comfort and trust), and while he was sleeping, his hair was shaved off. He was so comfortable with his distraction that he lost his power while sleeping.

The Ultimate Goal of Distraction: Destroying Vision

When Samson awoke, he thought he could simply “do as I did before and shake myself free,” unaware that “the Lord had left him”. The consequences for entertaining distraction were specific and severe:

• Vision Loss: The Philistines did not immediately kill Samson; instead, “they gouged out his eyes”.
• The Target is Sight: The distractions in your life are “not after just your life; they’re after your vision”. The ultimate goal of distraction is for a person to “live in the dark”.
• Bound and Useless: Samson was bound with bronze chains and forced to grind grain in prison. The distraction wants people to still be seen, but “still be bound” and unable to say anything of substance.