Love to hear from and know who is listening

Modern cars today are filled with devices that can cause distracted driving. Built-in touchscreens, digital dashboard displays, and GPS navigation systems are the primary devices that can cause dangerous driver distraction. Infotainment touchscreens are like small computers that light up the dashboard. The large center screens control the radio, climate, and vehicle settings, just to name a few things. Drivers take their eyes off the road to hunt through digital menus instead of feeling physical buttons. Research shows that using a touchscreen causes drivers to drift from their lane 42% of the time. Programming a destination into an onboard navigation screen takes about 40 seconds on average. At 25 miles per hour, this visual and manual distraction covers a distance longer than four football fields and that is at 25 miles per hour, we all know we are going much faster than that while driving down the road. Many drivers assume built-in voice commands are entirely safe. However, cognitive distraction remains high. Drivers can experience "inattention blindness," missing up to 50 percent of visual cues like pedestrians and stop signs while talking. I tell you all this information just to make a point. Distraction is Satan's greatest tool to get believers to not do what they should be doing!

Luke 8:14 ESV And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.

The thorns, represent everyday preoccupations, anxieties, and material desires rather than outright evil. I feel confident that if the Satan himself stood beside any person of faith and said, “Hey you know that guy the other week that really got under your skin, you should kill him!” or “You know, you and your wife have not had a good relationship now for years and that gal at work, you have so much more in common with her and such a better friendship, you should have an affair with her!” I am pretty confident we could all resist doing such out right evil things. All that being said it is much easier for Satan to just distract you from doing what would bring glory to God. I call it the choking effect. Just as thorns and weeds crowd out a plant from getting sunlight and water, constant busyness and worldly desires crowd God out of a person's daily focus. We all know what can happen if you get distracted for to long while driving, you will have an accident and you end up off the straight and narrow road and in the weeds.

Matthew 7: 13-14 ESV Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

So what are some ways that Satan can distract or discourage you from worshiping God? For a lot of us he just keeps us busy. When Sunday morning worship service rolls around he will tell you, “You know even God rested on the seventh day, He will understand if you sleep in and don't make it to church today.” Another way Satan can distract us is by doing good things, such as following your children and grandchildren to their extra circular activities, rather than worshiping God! Nothing evil in that! If Satan cannot be successful in causing you to reject God, maybe he can just get you to ignore God. It is a subtle but powerful strategy. Satan wants you to be so preoccupied with the details and the delights of everyday life that you neglect your relationship with God. Satan's subtle way of hindering your from becoming all God would have you be is by introducing even more distraction into your life!

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