Matthew 12
46While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
48He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”49Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.50For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Mark 9
30They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, 31because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”
Mark 10
17As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Mark 5
27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
Luke 5
17One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
Now more than ever, our world offers the illusion that we can be fully present in more than one place at a time. But it’s just that—an illusion. You know how I know? Because we’re not God and even when God himself came to earth in human form, he traded in his godly omnipresence for the human unipresence you and I experience today.
Like us today, Jesus had to deal with frequent distractions that competed for his attention. A man threw himself at Jesus’s feet as he was walking (see Mark 10:17). A woman touched his cloak, distracting Jesus with the knowledge that he had healed her (see Mark 5:27-30). One time, a man literally dropped through the roof over Jesus’s head as he was preaching (see Luke 5:17-20).
There were times when Jesus welcomed these distractions. But there were also times when Jesus ignored them in order to focus on the task at hand.
My favorite example of this comes from Matthew 12. Given that the main point of this passage is Jesus’s words about who is and who is not his family, it can be easy to miss the fascinating “B story.” Jesus is “talking to the crowd,” doing the work the Father sent him to do—namely preaching the gospel. All of a sudden, his family shows up. And Jesus ignores them. When Jesus was told his family was waiting outside, he didn’t say, “That’s all folks. My family’s here. You know the rule: God first, family second, work third!” He continued teaching.
At that moment, he was called to work, and he remained fully focused on the task at hand. Conversely, when he was with his family and friends, he was fully focused on them (see Mark 9:30-31).
In these and many other encounters in the gospels, Jesus is reminding us that God is omnipresent and we humans are not. When omnipresent God “became flesh,” Jesus embraced the human limitations of being unipresent. If Jesus couldn’t be in two places at the same time, neither can we. That brings us to the fifth principle in this series:
Principle #5
ACCEPT YOUR UNIPRESENCE
To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must accept our unipresence and focus on one important thing at a time.
How do we live out this principle in the twenty-first century? I’ve recorded a video showing you one tip that will only take you 2 minutes to implement but will be a total game-changer for your ability to stay focused at work. Watch here:
https://video-cdn.youversionapi.com/plans/22296/en/50723a22-ff7d-4e7a-ad80-262cf704089b/high.webm
We would like to thank Jordan Raynor for providing this plan.
Every Day With God 