The Battle for Our Attention

I have recently been reading the book Resilient by John Eldredge, and while the entire book is a great perspective on how we must build endurance in our faith, one of the sentences I read the other night stood out to me: 

“The battle is always for our attention.” 

That thought really dug into my mind, so I highlighted the phrase knowing I needed to dig a little deeper into why it was hitting me so hard. There’s a lot to unpack in such a short phrase, so I wanted to break it down piece by piece. 

THE BATTLE… 

You’ve likely heard the term “spiritual warfare,” and it makes sense why we use that term. The bible has many references equating our faith to war. “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12), “endure hardships as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3), and of course, “taking up the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:13-17).

When something goes wrong (a diagnosis isn’t what we hoped, anger seeps into a relationship, or when we watch the news only to be bombarded with negative and heartbreaking stories) we feel the attack. We see the broken world and feel it wearing us down; and when the big stuff hits, we fight. We turn to our bible, we ask our church family to pray with us, we fall to our knees.  

But what about the small things? Sometimes the attack is inconspicuous. The enemy will attack you with the little things, so small you might not even realize it’s an attack. He seeps into your daily life and goes after your attention. Throughout your day, the enemy wants your eyes to look away from the Lord – and this itself is a battle.  

This may be a rather silly example, but the other day I realized the shower is where the enemy really gets his hooks in my mind. For me, the shower is the place where my anxiety can kind of creep in with ‘what-if’ scenarios, and where a lot of the “made up conversations” take place.  

You know the conversations I’m talking about – the ones where you go back in time and win the argument, or the ones where you tell that one person what you really think of them? The ones where your anger, guilt, and shame all bubble up and, instead of dealing with it however you realistically handle things, you get your speech of righteousness in (maybe you imagine swinging in a punch or two, just because) and then you storm away leaving your opponent gob-smacked.  

This is one of the ways the enemy really hurts us. Because this imaginary scenario may not be real, but it certainly isn’t right. The bible says that the fruits of the spirit, the traits of the Lord, are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those imaginary conversations don’t bring those traits out of us. In fact, they tend to bring out the worst in us. That imaginary conversation is a battle for my attention and how I respond.  

If a thought is making you feel guilt, shame, fear, anger, anxiety, control, confusion, etc. – then it’s not of God, and you need to recognize it and fight that battle. The enemy finds the little moments in your day, when you let your guard down, and attacks you however he can.

…IS ALWAYS… 

Whether it’s in the shower or in the car, or anytime your attention is spread thin – these are moments of battle. 

That’s the thing, isn’t it? Sometimes you forget you are fighting a battle? You’re going through the day just trying to survive. You think to yourself, “if I can just make it through [xyz], I’ll be ok.” You’re not battling, you’re just pushing through. 

I don’t think we want to think of our life as a battle, we certainly don’t want to think of it as a constant battle. We’d rather it be cushy and good and not have to worry about anything. We don’t want to see the battle, because when you do see it, you have to face it and fight it. I sure don’t want to do that. I’d much rather pretend everything is a-okay and go about my day finding comfort in made up conversations where I’m the winner. 

But whenever we do that, whenever we try to live only in comfort and ignore the tiny little battles going on in our mind, we deny the truth that we are living in a constant battle.  

This is a truth that Jesus clearly warns us about. Jesus states himself, “in this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). He didn’t say it would be easy, he didn’t say you might have, he warns us – you will have tribulation.  

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we don’t want to deal with the “always” part of the phrase “the battle is always for our attention” or the “will have tribulation” because it means we can’t ignore the bad stuff. 

But we do a disservice to ourselves when we let our guard down, when we pretend things are fine when they’re not, or when we allow things of comfort to replace Jesus Christ. We’re all guilty of it; of escaping to social media, tv shows, drinking, exercise, relationships, anything to drown out and dull the battle around us.

Our attention is so easily swayed, and the more tired and worn down we are, the easier it is to look for anything easy to soothe your negative emotions. And the enemy certainly knows this. 

…FOR OUR ATTENTION. 

Our attention is finite. How often do you start your quiet time, only to be bombarded with 15 other things. Task lists, relationships, the ticking of the clock pop in your head and suddenly prayer doesn’t feel super important anymore. It gets knocked down the to-do list because you hear yourself say, “Oops, I need to hurry up or I’ll be late!” 

What about the things that enter our time with the Lord? You’re trying to have a prayer and your phone rings, or someone knocks at the door, and you never really make it back to your desk? 

What about the end of the day when you’re exhausted and you have a good hour before bed to yourself and you glance at you bible for a brief moment, only to tell yourself that if you opened it there’s no way your tired eyes could actually see the words properly. You think, “I can’t give him my 100% attention right now, I better wait until my head’s a little clearer.”  

All these things are valid. They’re the reality of our human nature. But they miss the point of the battle. 

We have to fight to stay focused on God. We want to think it’s easy, I love him and I’m so grateful for all that he does in my life – why can’t it just be easy to sit down in his presence and talk with him. But that’s not how it is. Our sin builds a wall between us and him, and the world yanks our attention away from his presence. You’re not broken or messed up when your quiet time doesn’t come easily. Until the Lord comes again, sin is banished, and the world is made new, our time with the lord is a battle. 

And that’s why we must actively choose him. We have to actively fight the distractions. We have to learn how to recognize the attacks from the enemy and the world, and build up the endurance to face them.

The battle for our attention is a battle we will face every single day.  

VICTORY IN THE LORD 

Thankfully we can take comfort knowing that the war is already won. Whenever we’re facing a battle, and the battle feels too heavy, we can look to Jesus knowing that he has already conquered our sin and shame. 

That thought doesn’t always ease the pain of a situation immediately, but that in itself is another battle. Continue to fight your battle. Sit in his presence, soak up his glory and his victory, and know that your battle is won through him and by him. He is with you, now and forever.

We know Jesus has already defeated sin, and we know that he will come again; we just have to fight through the world until that day when he arrives to make all things new. We fight the good fight of faith and take comfort knowing that victory is already ours.