As tough as the toughest super glue may be, however, there is another adhesive as tenacious as any developed by modern science. What’s more, this “substance” is as common as water. It’s everywhere, and is well known to us all. This “miracle bond” agent is well known but seldom named, and therefore has no “trade name.” However, it’s really no secret, and it’s nothing more than “sin-glue.”

That’s right, a bond even stronger than super glue is the one between a believer and the sins and bad habits that he wants to get rid of. It’s not by accident that we have the expression, “sticks like a bad habit.”

My belief is that the kingdom of God is comprised of only two kinds of people: sinners, who tell discouragingly familiar stories of struggles - usually unsuccessful - to overcome the “old nature,” and other sinners, who just, well, lie about it. The fact is, everyone knows first hand something of the warfare of which Paul writes in Romans 6-8.

Yet, the fruit of the old nature, the dead leftovers of the previous life (that’s before being born again, not before reincarnation) is not so hard to get rid of, once the process is understood. And to understand, it is helpful to consider a tree.

We have all seen trees in summer, covered with leaves. And we have all seen those same trees in winter, with bare branches. We have also seen the dead leaves just fall off the trees in autumn, as the tree transitions between the two seasons. You know how it works: The leaves turn die and brown, a little breeze comes along, and down they go. The problem with this obvious statement, however, is that it just ain’t true. Leaves don’t just “fall off” of trees.

Aw c’mon, you say. Of course they fall.

No, they don’t. They are pushed. Witness the branches torn from trees by a storm in mid-summer. They were covered with leaves, they fell, and they died. Did the leaves fall off? No. Though dead, they remained as firmly attached as ever.

Leaves don’t fall off: They are pushed. And the force that pushes the old, dead leaf from the tree in the autumn is the development of the bud of the new leaf, getting ready for the next spring. The new life pushes off the remains of the old. And all that is needed for the new life to happen is that the branch remain well-attached to the tree. Period.

But what about sin, you say. Simple. Our sins, bad habits and other unpleasantries from earlier days, like last summer’s leaves, will simply fall off when the right conditions are met.

Our problem is that we focus on the sin, and work to get rid of it, not knowing that the effort is self-defeating. Our focus must be on God, the source of new life, not on the sin that remains from the old life.

Jesus perhaps had this in mind when He said He was the vine and we were the branches (John 15:1-6). As the branches remain firmly attached to the vine, they just naturally bear fruit. No work, no strain, no sweat. And at the end of each season, the old growth -- leaves -- is discarded naturally by the preparation for the next season of growth.

This brings us to the most difficult challenge in living a godly life: focus, staying vitally attached to the vine. It is not difficult to overcome temptation, to resist sin, if we are focused on God and attached to Him. The hard part -- and it can be hard, indeed -- is maintaining that focus.

We have been taught that we should work hard to live holy lives, to “witness for Jesus,” to always be happy, to . . . well, you get the message. Most of us have experienced guilt and frustration as we have tried to do these things and failed. And they are not bad things: We should live holy lives. We should do many of the other things we think God would have us to do. But we should not -- in fact, we cannot -- do them in our own power, or out of a feeling that we should do them because . . . well, we just should. We’re Christians, after all.

We must focus on living in the closest possible relationship with God, and the rest will take care of itself. Joshua (1:7) was given the key, when he was told by God, “Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go.” Stay focused.

Most of life's problems that we struggle with resolve themselves as we focus on the Source of Life. Do you lack peace? Seek the Prince of Peace, and focus on Him, not on your lack of peace. As you focus on Him, He causes the Holy Spirit to be active in your life, bringing forth the fruit of His presence, an aspect of which is peace (Gal. 5:22). As you focus on the problem, you give that problem a prominent place -- a place of control -- in your life. You are reinforcing the very thing you want to be rid of.

How about excessive eating? Or compulsive shopping? Or any of the myriad behaviors we blame on “lack of will-power”? The answer is the same.

There is no such thing as “lack of will-power.” We all have a basic ability to choose, at some level. And we all have an ability to do what we choose, at some level. As we choose to focus as much of ourselves as we control, on as much of God as we know, again the Holy Spirit is freed to work in us, and another aspect of the fruit of His presence is self-control. (We understand that there are some people who, because of emotional implications, can exercise only a limited portion of their normal ability to choose. However, God offers healing and freedom to those people.)

Like happiness, which cannot be obtained by direct pursuit, the fruit of the Spirit cannot be produced by direct effort. However, the goal of the Holy Spirit is to reveal and glorify the Messiah in and to us (John 16:13-15). As we draw toward God, the Holy Spirit sets about creating in us the character of Jesus, making us into little reproductions of Him.

As we go through life, there will be an endless supply of distractions, yapping dogs of circumstance, seeking to move our focus off of who we are in our God and why we are here, and onto things which, though often fearsome in appearance, are secondary at best. They are the yapping dogs of distraction.

There is an account of a reporter from a major American newspaper being sent to do a story on a man who had for many years been a missionary on a remote island in the Pacific. The reporter flew across the ocean, then took a smaller airplane to an island. There, he boarded a boat, bound for a still more remote island, where he took a still smaller boat up a river. At the end of the river, he began walking, and after a trek of several days, he arrived at the place where the missionary lived. When the missionary’s wife answered his knock on the door, the reporter identified himself, and said, “I have come from America to interview your husband.” She graciously invited him in, but said, “I’m sorry, but today is Monday, my husband’s day of prayer. You will have to wait until tomorrow to see him.”

The missionary -- and his wife -- understood focus, and understood that “urgent” things must be put off to remain focused on the important things.

The key to a successful life as a believer is in the instructions given to Joshua: Be courageous, and stay focused. God will deal with the yapping dogs.