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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/john-dennison/focus-in-life/
Now I would like to read in the New Testament, Matthew chapter 10, please. The gospel of Matthew chapter 10, actually we'll just pick up a couple of verses in verse 9, in chapter 9 rather. Matthew chapter 9 and verse 35, and Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.
When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all manner of sicknesses and all manner of disease.
Now the names of the twelve apostles are these. The first, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the publican, James the son of Alphaeus and Labius, whose surname was Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans, enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons, freely ye have received, freely give. Now we'll go over to Mark's gospel, chapter 3, please.
Mark chapter 3, verse 9, and he spake to his disciples that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him. Verse 13, and he goeth up into a mountain and calleth unto him whom he would.
And they came unto him, and he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons. And Simon he surnamed Peter, and James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, and he surnamed them Boenerges, Boenerges, if you want a little bit of a Spanish pronunciation on an English word that comes from Greek, which is the sons of thunder, and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him.
And they went into a house. Now Luke's gospel, please, Luke's gospel, chapter 6, Luke 6, verse 12, and it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God.
And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples, and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles, sent ones, Simon, whom he also named Peter, and Andrew, his brother James, and John, and Philip, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Thaddaeus, and Judas, the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which was also with the traitor.
And he came down with them and stood in the plain and the company of his disciples and a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem. Finally, Acts chapter 1, please, Acts chapter 1, verse 13, and when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotis and Judas, the brother of James.
These all continue the one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and marry the mother of Jesus with his brethren. Now whenever you read a list of things in public, be it a genealogy or a list as we have read today, at least I am conscious that eyes can start to flutter, mouths can start to open, good spiritual yawns can be heard, lists.
Instead of reading one, we have read four. But what I learned is that if it's in the Bible four times, the lists of the twelve or the eleven on the last occasion, disciples, there must be some importance for it, something that the Lord is trying to impress on our hearts.
They impressed me, these men, because these were men, these were men with mission. They were men on a mission. These were men who had a very distinct focus in their life. Now I would like to speak to you today about having a focus in your life, a direction.
Now I often thought that these men were kind of a spiritual delta force. They were men that were selected, they were apart from the normal rank and file soldier, and really what was with them has nothing to do with us.
But God has been impressing me, thinking over and over about these lists. These were men who had what I would like to have. They were men who had a clear sense of why they were on earth, why they had been called, and what they were to do.
These were men who had found their focus. Now you say, well, I don't know, that's fine if you really want to take our time to talk about missionaries. You know, we have something unique, as you know, in our culture, or maybe our assembly culture more than anywhere else.
I was a preacher of the gospel, and then I went to Mexico for 11 months and I became a missionary, supposedly, and then I came back and I left being a missionary and I became a preacher of the gospel, and now I'm back in Mexico, so they say I'm a missionary.
Anybody who has a mission is a missionary. They have been commissioned. Whether you are far off in some other land, or whether you are in Garnavillo, my question today is, have you found your focus? If you had to take a 3x5 cart and write out, my mission right now in my life is, what would you put down?
What responsibility? What is your call? What is your mission, your purpose right now? You see, the Apostle Paul, he lived and he said, I want to apprehend that for which I have been apprehended by Christ Jesus.
The Lord Jesus in John's gospel, more than 40 times it is said, he speaks, or it is said of him, it speaks about the one who sent him. He was conscious of his sending, and if at the Garnavillo conference this weekend, God were to give us a sense of sentness, I can invent a word with your permission, a sense of sentness, that God has something for me to do.
He has a purpose for me. He has given me life. He has saved my soul, and what am I doing right now in my life? Oh, that God would help us, and this is what I would like to speak about at the end of the meeting this morning.
Help us to find our focus. Finding our focus. I want to think with you, first of all, looking at these lists, because each time the list occurs, it occurs with different surrounding circumstances, the circumstances in which focus can be found.
First of all, I want you to think of Matthew's gospel. The Lord Jesus looks upon the Jewish people. His heart is moved. He has compassion because he sees them as sheep that are scattered, sheep that are scattered.
I recall one time, I'm a city boy, but I saw a group of sheep in downtown Phoenix. In Phoenix, you can have a whole bunch of subdivisions and then a farm and then a whole bunch of subdivisions and then some horses.
That's just the way the city has been designed, and as I came to the intersection of two subdivisions and that little, just a subdivision road, all of a sudden I saw a whole bunch of sheep that had gotten out of a fenced-in area.
And I don't know if he was the man who worked there, I hope not, I think he might have been one of the neighbors. And the poor fella, the sheep were kind of all around it, and he would dart after one sheep and try, and then he would see another one over there and he would fly over there and he was running all around.
The Lord Jesus says, look at the circumstances, in pressure, in pressure now, look at it all, things going all directions. And not only that, there was just, he spoke to them and he said, that the harvest is plenteous, the harvest, now, pardon me if I'm wrong here, but I'm from the city, I don't know too much about farming, but I think that when it comes to the harvest, is it not true that you have a certain time and urgency, you gotta get the crop off?
The harvest is plenteous, he says. Not only are things going in all directions, but this is an urgent, this is a pressure cooker situation, and the middle of that kind of, anybody identify with that kind of life?
Were you sensing in your life right now, things are going in all directions, and the pressures are building, and things are urgent? In the middle of all that, there were some disciples and they found their focus.
But then come with me, not only in the pressures you can find of circumstances, you can find focus, when you come to Mark's gospel, it's a different story. There it speaks about, two times over, it speaks about the great multitude, and then in the verse we read, it talks about the multitude was thronging, the throng was there.
And so the Lord Jesus asked for a little boat, and he's on a boat because there is, why, this is now a circumstance, not a pressure, this is a circumstance of prosperity. Everything is going top notch.
Anybody here right now, and things are flying well for you. And everything's going well, straight A's, popular, everything going well, part-time job, everything's just cooking right along. In the middle of all that success, these disciples found their focus.
But then you come to Luke's gospel. When you come to Luke's gospel there, it speaks about in those days, in those days. What were those days in Luke's gospel? And Luke's gospel, what you have is you have persecution.
Because it says right before the commission, the calling of the twelve disciples, you will find there that it says that the Jewish, the scribes and the Pharisees, that there was madness. And in fact, they were trying to find out what they would do, what they would do with Jesus.
The wheels of persecution, the wheels that are going to lead to our crucifixion are already moving along. And what I sense from this is that in the middle of that persecution, which is a frothing, boiling hatred inside of those people, wanting to oppress and to obliterate and eliminate the Lord Jesus and get God out of their lives, in the middle of that persecution that would come upon the disciples as well, they found their focus.
Come to the book of the Acts. Now it's not the same calling, I understand that, but you'll allow me just to apply it this way? There they are, all of the perplexity now, full of questions. Here we are in Jerusalem.
Who is this Comforter? When is he coming? And the Lord Jesus went, and when is he coming back? He said he was coming back. And where are we going to go next? And what's going to happen? And we have the Old Testament, but all kinds...
Anybody here have questions? And you say, I've just got to get this all solved, and then I'll worry about what I'm supposed to be doing in my life. Circumstances. Circumstances. Whether it is circumstances where you feel you are in a pressure cooker life right now, or you're filled with perplexity and you have all kinds of questions, or whether things are going so well and things are prosperous, you don't want to make any change, and you don't want to think about it too much, or maybe it is a case of where your family is against you, your neighbors are speaking, and the assembly is under persecution, in all circumstances, I learned, there is no excuse.
There is no excuse in terms of circumstance for not living a purposeful, directed, meaningful, mission-filled life. The gospel writers have covered the panorama of circumstances, and in all of those circumstances, put it all together, giving different angles on the same story, these men found their focus.
Would to God this morning, at the Garneville Conference, that whatever your circumstances might be, you may go away with this burden, oh God, I do need direction, I want to find the focus that you have for me, that I might live a life that is full of mission, of purpose, for my God.
But I want to notice as well, not just the circumstances in which they found their focus, you can't help but pick up the conditions, the conditions in which they found their focus. Not the conditions in terms of circumstances, I mean the condition of the, the condition of the, who are they?
They are disciples. So first of all, you'll notice the condition of consistency. They are disciples. Who are people that find focus? People who are in the condition of being disciples. Now what is a disciple?
I remember way back the first time we went to Mexico, learned a bit of Spanish, and our two older boys at the time, they, they went to school, they were going to go to school. And so the school year began.
And our littlest fella at that time, our third one, he was three years old, and in Mexico you can start school in pre-kindergarten at the school at age three. And so we were being a little nervous because he didn't speak a lick of Spanish.
But he saw his brothers and he got all motivated and he wanted to go to school too. And during the first week of school he was after us, so we went and saw the administrator and we said, sure, he can come in, he can start school.
So we went and bought him this cute little uniform as they wear down there, and the little white socks and the black shoes and a little backpack and a little lunch pail. And the day came, we had took him to school, Brady was going to school.
He was going to be a student. Well mom and dad, we were a little torn up about that. And all day long, biting the fingernails, waiting to see our little boy, he came out bounding out of the school, telling us all about what he had done at school that day.
Next morning I went in, I shook him a little bit and I said, Brady, it's time to get up for school. Through the sleepy eyes he looked at me and he said, I already went. Anybody here ever done a discipleship course and you think you're a disciple?
Anybody here ever pass through a little program, an internet thing where you graduate or you pass the exam and you became? They were not men who were disciples, they were disciples. What is a disciple?
A disciple is someone who would, like a student, would learn, they would be learners, and then they take that and then they live it. The disciples of John, they got his teaching and then they lived it out.
Disciples of the Lord Jesus, they are learners from him and then they are livers for him. Pardon me for calling you a liver, but are you? Disciples, that consistency, they were, he called his, not so that they would be disciples.
They had already heard that call to discipleship. Finding our focus may depend on the issue of do we have that consistency of learning from the Lord and living out what he has taught us. If we are not learners and we are not livers, then we are not in the condition to find our focus.
But I want you to think not only about the consistency. You can't help but notice the sensitivity, the sincerity, rather, sincerity and the idea of being real and devoted and exclusive. You know, I guess maybe I've lived in the desert too long now, but mountain climbing is not, mountain climbing is, that's hard work.
Recently I had to climb up a mountain and this specimen of physical fitness was breathing really hard. Why didn't he just say, just meet me on the corner over there, you can read the commission that he gave to them so quickly, why didn't he just drop them all a note in the mail and just leave it with that?
Come up to a mountain, two gospels give it that, up to a mountain. You come away from all of the distractions. If you're going to find your focus, you've got to come alone, sincerely devoted, focused on the Master.
All of the distractions of their lives, leaving fishing businesses and tax tables behind, they come together and political lives and whatever else they did, and they come together now. If I'm going to find my focus, my spiritual focus in life, then I must have that exclusive, that sincere, that real devotion, that focus upon Him.
Half-hearted Christian living is not a condition for finding focus. The most focused man in the Bible is the Lord Jesus, and He was the most devoted man. The most, He had His mind exclusively on the will of God.
There is not a gap in His life or in His eternal existence in which the Bible would not give us a statement to cover before Him. Even as a child, He grew up before Him, all times in His life are covered because He had a mindset that His disciples were going to have to adapt, that if you're going to find your focus, you have to have a mind for God.
Not only the consistency, the condition of sincerity, but the condition of dependency. Matthew's Gospel tells us that He said to them, Pray ye, pray ye, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers.
You say, well, He was going to call them, why did they have to pray if He already knew what He was going to do? What He was saying to them was, do you not see what I see? Do you not sense the lostness of the people around us?
Do you not sense the need to go out and to reach them? Do you not catch a little of what's in my heart? Do you not sense the urgency of the situation? Pray ye. Get a look at what I'm looking at. Get God's perspective on it all.
Pray ye. What are you praying about? Do you see any need in the community where you live? Do you see any particular, you're saying, I wish I had my focus. I am a computer programmer. I am working as a helper in the school, and I'm in the home with my 17 children.
There I am. And I am busy. I'm just a student. I'm a high school student. What kind of need does God see right there? You say, well, I'm in an assembly and there's 70 people in the assembly. What kind of need is there?
What does God see? What does the Lord? What is his perspective on it all? You see what prayer does? It aligns our minds, our focus, and our hearts with him. And we pray. We see it all, and we begin to pray.
Warning. Because what they prayed about suddenly became the plan for their life. Pardon, a personal reference. I saw all of the Hispanics around the country, and I was praying, Lord, send somebody to learn the language.
I'm thick-headed. Suddenly, I'm not saying this is what you should do, but this principle came home real to me. The need, the burden, it turned into the plan for their lives. Go ye, he says, because you have seen the burden.
You have seen the need. You have felt it all. Maybe there is someone here and you suddenly are starting to realize that the need in the assembly where you are is that people need encouragement. And you've been praying about it, and you're seeing what God is seeing.
That very thing is going to turn into the focus of your life, maybe. Whatever it may be, I'm not saying now, I am not here on a recruiting mission for Mexico, and I will say that the vacancy sign is still open.
But you will understand that whatever level it may be, as a student at college, as a parent, as a person in the assembly, a businessman, farming, whatever you do, what's your focus? The condition for finding focus is a condition of dependency upon a prayer.
If there's no focus, the likelihood is there's no prayer. You say, will I say my prayer? That's the problem. That's the problem. Saying prayers and praying are different things. But I want to notice as well the sensitivity, the sensitivity in finding focus, the condition of sensitivity.
Now how, when you're the last speaker, you're the victim of what has gone on before. They have stolen your fire, your thunder. So I would take it that God wants us to learn something about this principle.
How were they actually going to find their focus? A conference of disciples, they divide up? Some kind of a, I heard about a shiver in the liver, I was thinking more of a quiver in the liver. Whatever it is, a shiver or a quiver in the liver, it doesn't matter.
Some kind of an internal gut movement that guides us? Focus is found when there is sensitivity to the Word of God. Sensitivity to the Word of God. The most focused man, could I repeat it, was the Lord Jesus.
What does it say? When he was coming into the world, what was he saying? Lo, I come in the volume of the book that is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O God. How did he know what he was coming for?
How did he have such focus and a mission on his heart? The volume of the book that was written of me. And how did he live then with such a sense of mission and focus and purpose? The Bible continues to say, the law of God was within his heart.
Disciples, the focus that you are going to have, your mission for God, you will get directly from the Word of the Lord. You say, well, my mission at the company I work at is determined by the board of directors.
I'm sorry to hear that. You say, well, I'm a student. It's whatever all the teachers and my high school counselor, nothing against high school counselors, great opportunity. Keep at her if that's what you do.
You say, well, they tell me. Maybe there is someone here and you say, well, the overseers tell me, standard bearers. The Word of God. The Word of God. You understand now? You say, well, I'm a mother in the home.
What does the Bible say? To raise our children, to bring them up in the fear and admonition of, of who? Of the Lord. Have a mindset, a focus that this is a work that is done, not just so you can get those kids up so they can eventually go out and go away and get a job and get out of the house.
What is it? It's a mission for God. And you say, well, now the little Sunday school class I teach, why, that's so that we can keep them busy so the parents can, no, my, my dear brother, my dear sister, it is a focus.
What does it say there in the job? That you will not be men pleasers, but you will serve Christ. And children in the home, if there are young children and you're in the assembly today and you say, well, my mission, what do I do?
What about children that obey their parents in the Lord? And husbands that will love their wives as Christ, and there will be the women who will submit to their husbands in the, you see what he's saying?
It is not that all of our lives and the compartments of our lives are here, and then our spiritual focus is over here. The Bible takes all of these areas and puts them right in the middle of it all in the focus, in the mission, the purpose that God has for us.
Sensitivity. What in the Bible? It is delightful when a Christian gets, God speaks to them, puts a burden from his word in their heart, that this is the mission that he has for me right now according to the word of the Lord.
Sensitivity is the fourth condition that I see here. But I want to end my little message because in English, I guess we say, your stomach are growling. In Spanish, it's a little more pretty. We talk about how your intestines are singing.
But I think that's probably what's happening right now. So let me just end my message by speaking to you about some considerations, some considerations. Considerations for finding your focus. First of all, the priority of communion.
The priority of communion. He called them unto them that they might be with him. You say, well, I thought that they were supposed to go and preach and eventually they were going to go and preach all over the world.
That's true. But the priority above all of that that would actually give power and direction in that is first of all, the priority has to be in focus for God, communion with the Lord. You say, I'm so busy with my Sunday school class.
I'm so busy, I hardly have time for my personal devotion. Then you're out of focus. Things are blurry. The priority is first of all, communion with the Lord. You say, well, I'm so busy in the gospel, I don't have time to read and pray.
You say, that could never happen. You're too spiritual for that to happen. I want to tell you, it can happen. It can happen to all of us. You say, the children, they seem to get up earlier every morning.
Pretty soon they're going to be getting up at night and they don't go to bed and it's just all day long. Yes, I'm doing it for God. Don't forget in the mission this consideration. All missions are subject to this priority, that first of all, he calls us to be with him, spend time with the Savior.
That's what he wants most of all. Now, that would never be a sufficient excuse. That's why we probably never read of it. Of one of the disciples saying, Lord, I couldn't take the gospel, I couldn't take the message of the kingdom to all Israel because I just want to be with you.
I want to put it in balance. This is not a case of 24 -7 Bible reading. Put it in balance. He says, go, but be with me. He leaves them with that responsibility, that juggling act of the priority of be with him, time with him.
It is humbling to think of how little amount of time we actually spend with him. Spend time with me, he says, that's the priority, and then go. But I want you to think not only of the consideration of the priority of communion, but I want you to think about the possibility of sanctification, the possibility of sanctification.
Please don't ask me to repeat that word. It's one of the most difficult words for me to pronounce in the English Bible. Sons of thunder. What does that mean? Why it seems to be that the opinions are divided.
There are those who are saying, who say, well, they were sons of thunder. You know, those kinds of personalities that don't come in like a soft breeze. They come thundering in and they bull. Maybe that's what it was.
And the Lord says, I want you to notice what I see in the two of you. You are characterized by thunder. Others think that that was the characteristic of their preaching. Not in terms of volume, but that rumbling, powerful, energy-filled impact.
Sons of thunder. Sons of thunder. See what happened? If that was their personality, if that was their characteristic, God sanctified that to make them sons of thunder preachers. You say, well, I don't know.
I have this characteristic about me. That characteristic could be a weakness. You say, well, I'm so soft-hearted. I just, I can't go by anybody and if I see the need, I have to help. Now you could be, you could be taken advantage of if that's the way you are.
That's your characteristic. But if you took that, you see, I think that's what was happening. There was that Labius, is that how you say it? Big heart. Thaddeus. Larger heart. Judas. Judas. You see his name changes?
Judas. Praise to God. See what happened? This man who has a soft heart all of a sudden has a bigger heart, and now that heart is all praise to God. Could God sanctify in the focus your characteristics?
You say, well, I'm just a, I'm an organization freak. I just have to have everything organized. I'd like to talk to you afterwards. Help me. Maybe God could sanctify that. You say, well, that could turn out into a, it's a downside.
I could, I could manipulate it. Maybe you could, but if God sanctified it, it could be a tremendous blessing to that assembly. You see, characteristics. But there's also capabilities. Down the list we go, Matthew the publican.
Publican, why he, he collected taxes. He handled money all the time. You say, I'd like to get some financial help from my Bible. How to administer my money? And I, I would wonder if any of the gospels will speak to me about money.
Which gospel will speak to me more about money and the handling of stewardship than maybe any other gospel? Matthew. You say, well, I wonder what my focus is. I just happen to be a class one, I don't even know how you describe it, class one computer programmer.
I'm a whiz kid. But I don't know what God, do you think God could sanctify that? You say, well, I'm a, I'm a, well, I'm a fantastic Italian cook. I don't know, but that, that has nothing to do with my.
You don't know what God might use. Young brother, young sister, what God, what skills, what capabilities do you have? You say, well, I can play the piano. You won't be using that in the assembly in Garneville from the sound of it, I hope not.
But maybe that could be something you could use. What do you, what do you have that God could bring into your focus as a means to reach other people, especially with the gospel? You can brainstorm because you know your life, to get before God and to see a need.
And when you see that I could, I could try and fill that need that God has given me, God can sanctify capabilities. And God can sanctify characteristics. And so we see this consideration of the possibility of sanctification.
Last of all, the process of direction. The process of direction. You've already heard about this. You'll notice that the Lord Jesus gives, gives the, if you read the whole story in Matthew's gospel there, he gives the same direction to all of the disciples.
Yes. Do you not just hear that? The general direction, the 99, I forget the percentage, 99, you remember, all of the Word of God. You see, when they got practicing all of that, all of a sudden out of that would come a direction that Peter should speak in Jerusalem, and that, and that Thomas would go to India, and specific direction comes when we are following the general direction.
That's what I learned as a boy. When my father gave me the opportunity to drive his car. He gave me the opportunity to drive his car stationed right there in the driveway, because I couldn't reach the pedals.
But he let me get in the car as if I was as big as my dad, and I put my hands on the wheels and I went to try and move that wheel. It wasn't going anywhere. But I was in such admiration of my father because when he turned the ignition on and he went driving, he was one hand, just so easy.
I thought the muscles in my father's arm are so great. What was going on? It's a lot easier to steer a moving car. God says here's the general direction, now get going, and I will guide you in all of the small .5 or whatever it was.
We have been hearing about all of that? Get the Word of God. And when we have this reality in our hearts, the process of direction will take place. Don't worry about the long term, where will I? What about now?
May God help us all to find our focus, to have a mission like these men and these lists.