
Distraction: - (1) A drawing apart; a separation
(2) Confusion from a multiplicity of objects crowding on the mind and calling the attention different ways; perturbation of mind; perplexity
(3) Confusion of affairs; tumult; disorder
(4) Madness; a state of disordered reason; franticness; furiousness. [We usually apply this word to a state of derangement which produces raving and violence in the patient.]
Distraction is confusion, disorder, chaos, madness, foolishness and insanity.
Our most urgent distraction is from
Deuteronomy 6:5 (AMP) - And you shall love the Lord your God with all your [mind and] heart and with your entire being and with all your might.
Mark 12:30 (AMP) - And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.
Distraction is a
Genesis 37:1-4 (NASB) -Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan. 2 These are the records of the generations of Jacob. Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. 4 His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms.
Disproportionate love from
can distract us.
Genesis 37:5-8 (NASB) -Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Please listen to this dream which I have had; 7 for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 Then his brothers said to him, “Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
Where we are with God personally is not contingent upon the love and support of
Have compassion when family members are jealous of you, but don’t let them
God has a way for us to live—a humility that He has called us to—and it’s the way we humans happen to
really flourish.
- Brant Hansen