Every year, my church calls a 21-day Daniel Fast. During this time of concentration and seeking God, I try to reflect on the things that God wants me to work on in my life. It’s amazing what God will show you about yourself. On the 12th day of the fast, God began to speak to me about distractions. I started to pray about this, and immediately, the Holy Spirit dropped into my heart the following scripture.
Song of Solomon 2:15 (NKJV): “Catch the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.”
The book of Song of Solomon is about a couple falling in love. But it also is about our relationship with God.
The vineyard represents the love between the bride of Christ and the Bridegroom, Jesus. The foxes represent small problems, distractions, fleshly thoughts, little sins, temptations, or words that can lead to greater issues.
It is important that we pay close attention to the issues that can lead to long-term consequences. Little foxes can also damage our personal growth. Little foxes start nibbling on the green leaves and then go to the roots once they can’t reach the leaves.
I begin to think about my grandmother’s grapevines. She had them manicured beautifully. She had four posts that held the grapes off the ground. At the ground were small limbs with beautiful green leaves. I thought about small animals eating the green leaves and then moving to the roots. If this happened, the beautiful vineyard would be damaged, and the vines would die quickly, therefore killing the fruit.
We need to catch the little foxes quickly. We need to promptly recognize the little foxes, the distractions that get our focus off of our Lord and Savior. Little distractions come in, such as conflicts, misunderstandings, lies, disappointments, Facebook, etc.
We need to develop healthy boundaries in our relationship with God. We need to recognize the little distractions that take us away from our prayer time, bible reading time, serving, and even our church attendance. Once these things start lacking in our lives, we become weak, and it becomes very hard to fight the battles in our minds.
We need to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to us to reveal what God has planned for us. We need to ask Him to order our steps. We need to yield our hearts to God daily. We need to pray Psalm 51:10 (NRSV):
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
Peter got distracted in the book of Matthew when he was walking on the water. He got to looking at the winds and waves. This caused him to take his eyes off of Jesus, which brought in fear and doubt.
In the Old Testament, David was distracted by a woman on a roof taking a bath. This led to him going to her, and she became pregnant. To cover this up, David had her husband go to war and be put on the front line in the battle, which resulted in the husband’s death. Regardless of the distraction, we need to step back, refocus, and refuse to be pulled away from God.
Distraction means something that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else. Distractions cause you to lose hope, destroy relationships between husbands, wives, and siblings, and cause people to walk away from the call of God in their lives. Distractions will cause extreme agitation of the mind. Sometimes, you may feel you are drowning, and anger and hate will arise.
Distractions can be external, like noises such as children playing, TVs being too loud, or irritating noises like batteries going out in a smoke alarm. Internal distractions can be voices and words that cause great frustration. It can cause us to lose interest in something God wants us to do.
Distractions don’t always come from the enemy. Sometimes, it will be our flesh. Most important is how we handle distractions. Do we respond to them quickly and move them out of the way, or do we pet them, think about them all the time, and let them take root in our hearts? We do not need to let these little foxes destroy God’s plans for us. It is time to take authority over the little foxes and refuse to give in to them.
I want to challenge you to start looking at distractions in a different light. Recognize them for what they are. Is it something that takes your focus off your relationship with God? Deal with them quickly and move forward, growing and getting closer to your Saviour.
Patti League
Lean into Jesus Ministries
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