Break the Gaze

My dog, Charlie, is a beagle mix and he loves food—all food. When we are eating around him, he fixes his eyes squarely on what we are eating. He’s waiting for us to accidentally drop something or if we aren’t paying attention—he has occasionally hopped up and grabbed food from the table. In order to keep him from doing this, I say “break the gaze” and move him away. Charlie’s gaze is what gets him in trouble when he sees something he wants. The same is with us, we get into trouble when we focus on what we want more than what God wants for us. Maybe it’s time we also “break the gaze.”

Breaking the gaze doesn’t always just happen because we want to do it. Many of us are creatures of habit and we may need help to get the victory over our mind. The first step in breaking the gaze is to step back and question our motives for wanting what we want. We ask ourselves “is this for God’s glory? Anything less than God getting the glory, isn’t worth it.

The next step is disciplining our minds to focus on God’s word and how it speaks to our situation. God gets glory when we are patient and trust in His timing rather than ours. When we are tempted to focus more on what we want than we should, we can recite or meditate on scriptures such as 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, Colossians 3:2, and Philippians 4:6-8. As we practice questioning our motives and applying God’s word, we find that our attention is less focused on the object and more on the Lord. The gaze is broken and we can be free to hear clear direction from the Lord again.

Prayer

Dear Lord, help me to break the gaze from anything that takes my attention away from You. Help me to be more captivated by Your will than mine. In Jesus’ name, amen.

In His Service,

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