Is it Jesus, or is it Junk?

Several months ago, I made a trip to Walmart. I can't remember what I had to get, but I am sure it was something important like Oreos. Regardless, I remember walking out of the store and back to my car. As I got in my pristine 2014 Ford Focus, fully equipped with air conditioning and XM Radio, I noticed something odd about the truck parked in front of me. The area behind the steering wheel was full of trash (no judgment... my car isn't spotless either). But I'm not talking about a little bit of trash... it was stacked to the ceiling. When the car started to move backwards, it startled me because there were so many bottles, boxes, and drive thru bags that I didn't even notice that the driver was inside!

After he drove away, I thought to myself, “why would he not just throw all that stuff away? Was he saving it for something?" There is no way he could see clearly out of his windshield! It was definitely a safety hazard.

I got to thinking about a point I’ve heard several Pastors make that deals with windshields and rear view mirrors: "WINDSHIELDS IN CARS ARE MUCH BIGGER THAN REAR VIEW MIRRORS BECAUSE WHAT IS AHEAD OF US IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT IS BEHIND US."

I love this quote! I can't remember the Pastor that said it, but I totally agree with what is being communicated. We can’t change the past. We can't change what we did. We can't change what that they did. We can't change what we said. We can't change what they said. All we can do is focus on what is in front of us at this very moment! What's ahead of us is more important than what's behind us.

This is where the guy with the junk in his window comes in! We can’t focus on what’s right in front of us if we have a bunch of junk blocking our vision. I feel like we let "junk" get in the way of us focusing on what actually matters and what's actually important in life far too often.

Junk, by definition, is this: old articles, or things, that are considered useless or of little value.

More than likely, you already knew that. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about junk-relationships, junk-attitudes, junk-habits, or anything else in our lives that is "useless or of little value". If we are honest with ourselves... we can all find some junk like this in our lives.

Everybody struggles with this. The question we have to answer is: What can we do about this problem? Let's go to scripture and see what God says.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Philippians 4:8

Our thoughts are very important. Thoughts lead to our words... our words lead to our actions... our actions lead to our habits... our habits lead to our character... and our character is the reflection of who we are on the inside.

Your thoughts are important.

We can all agree that the characteristics mentioned in the verse above are good characteristics, and while I'm sure we could all think about things that fit the description in the verse, I want us to think about WHO fits the description!

Think about it... True, honorable, right, pure, lovely, commendable, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. THEY DESCRIBE JESUS! Paul is telling us we have to fix our focus. We have to fix our focus on Jesus. Why? Because what we focus on gets magnified.

If we focus on junk, we’ll see more junk. If we focus on Jesus, we’ll see more of Jesus.

So I want to encourage you with one thing today:

Ask the question, "Is it Jesus, or is it junk?"