Eyes On You

Well hello again!! Vail here and I am so grateful for each and every one of you that comes here to join us on our blog and take this journey of learning together! As I began preparing for this post, I was struggling to find the right topic or the right words to speak. I was praying to God to reveal it to me and I was beginning to get frustrated because I wanted the "perfect" post and I was stuck.

I then had to realize that whatever God compels me to write will be His Word, not mine, and therefore, I should not be concerned about if other people will love it and it will be the "ideal blog post".

Soon after this realization, I was in the car and the song "Eyes On You" by Mosaic MSC came on and I immediately felt the presence of God. The song talks about how all of our attention and affection should be for the Lord and that He is the ultimate focus of our lives. This song that I had listened to plenty of times before now had a new meaning to me and I wasn't going through the motions while listening to it.

At this moment, I remembered that at the start of this year, I chose a few words to focus on and one of them is devotion. If you google the word devotion, you get "love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person". This definition is what I have learned to think of the word devotion because before, I used to think of it as like daily devotionals or other things like that. To me, the word devotion is more like waking up and living my life for the Lord and knowing that His plan is what I should stick to rather than what I want. It means to give all my love to Him and live to make sure His Will is done.

So when I connected the song "Eyes On You" to the word devotion, it was kind of a wakeup call to me. In busy times, it can be so so difficult to make sure God is getting all of our attention and affection. Sometimes I replace Him with friends, school work, or other things I prefer and my attention strays from God and I lose focus. I know we are human and this may happen, but we need to always try to remind ourselves of who we are living for and that we wouldn't be living if it wasn't for Him.

One thing that goes hand in hand with devotion is the ability to be intentional. If we are not intentional about being devoted to God, then we will not be disciplined enough to get closer to God everyday. I know that so many of you are probably like, okay what does being intentional with devotion look like? Well trust me, it takes a lot of learning and accountability. It also never looks perfect and no ones devotion will look the same as others. Comparison can be dangerous in devotion because we can often get discouraged by the fact that we are not as close to God as those around us. I always try to tell myself that my walk with God is my walk with God.

To keep myself focused, I have learned different tricks to stay close to God. I will always be trying to learn more and trying to challenge myself more. One thing I have been doing lately is journaling at night and I have learned that this can look different each night. One night I may make a huge realization of what God is doing in my life and then the next night I am writing out things that I am thankful for. I also try to listen to worship music every morning to start the day praising God. I also just got the devotional book,"Embraced" by Lisa TerKeurst. I am so excited to start it because with being devoted to God, it is important to learn more through His Word and then put it into practice.

I shared all of this today because I want each one of you to live in devotion to God and I in no way shared this to say "Oh look at me, I have a perfect relationship with the Lord and I stay on top of it everyday" because OH BOY that is so false!! I forget to journal at night, I may go a few days without reading my Bible, I may even sometimes dread lettering on a Bible because I am tired. I am not perfect at this and I am fully aware of that. I just try to improve everyday and I wanted to share this to you all so we can work on it together!! Striving to love God more and know Him more, while living a life for Him is being devoted. I am praying for each one of you that you can be devoted to Him and that all of our eyes on Him, above all else.