For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.     Galatians 5:14-15 HCSB

I’m a people person. I like to interact with people. I also like to watch people and I enjoy studying people. I believe all of these served me well the 25 years I spent in law enforcement. But only as my career was coming to an end, did I understand the importance of putting other people above myself.

Sadly, in law enforcement you have to watch out for yourself. You have to be on guard. Especially in probation and parole when you often worked alone and spent most of your time in the offender’s home environment. You often found yourself outnumbered when it came to the offender’s family members or roommates or whoever happened to be in their home.

One common trait in these offenders was they always had the “Looking out for number one” mentality. They were very inwardly focused. They did what they needed to do in order to attempt to live the way they wanted to live. If this meant lying, stealing, using drugs or any other type of violation, they justified it in their own way.

That’s what inwardly focused people do. They focus on themselves and what they need with no regard to the wellbeing of those around them. Churches can also be inwardly focused. If you find yourself in a church that is inwardly focused, you may want to think twice before joining them.

How can you tell if a church is inwardly focused? Well, the same way you can tell if a person is inwardly focused. Follow the money trail. Does their money get used on the church and only the church? Or do they tithe to other organizations? Does all of their money stay in-house to take care of only the church’s needs, or do they support other ministries? Do they have their own ministries that provide an outreach to the community around them?

In this day and age many people are doing exactly what they want to do. They are doing what satisfies them and have no regard for the Bible. They totally ignore God’s word and live as they please. Well, I hope they enjoy that because God’s word says in Romans 1:19-24 that if we live that way, God will give us over to our sinful desires.

When we are inwardly focused, we are only concerned about our own needs and wants. We not only disregard the needs of others, but we also fail to even see what others need. I’ve learned that when I focus on myself, God allows me to take care of myself. That is never good.

But when I focus on God, He takes good care of me (Matthew 6:33-34). God gives us free will to choose how we spend our money and our time. How we spend our money, and our time shows where our focus is. Paul said in Philippians 2:3 that we should do nothing out of rivalry or conceit but in humility should consider others more significant than ourselves.

Our pastor often says the way we find true joy is by putting Jesus first, other’s second and yourself last. No good will come from us being inwardly focused either as an individual, a family or a church. This is not how God designed us to be. Our Scripture passage says that the inwardly focused will bite and devour each other. Give that some thought.

Have a great day!