I was reading this story earlier to day and it got me thinking...

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used to tell of a time when there was a wave of petty theft in the Soviet Union. To curtail this, the authorities put guards up around the factories.

At a timber-works in Leningrad, one guard knew the workers in the factory very well. The first evening, out came Pyotr Petrovich with a wheelbarrow containing a great bulky sack with a suspicious-looking object inside. "All right, Petrovich," said the guard, "What have you got there?" "Oh, just sawdust and shavings," Petrovich replied. "Come on," the guard said, "I wasn’t born yesterday. Tip it out."

The worker tipped and nothing came out but sawdust and shavings. So he was allowed to put it all back again and go home. When the same thing happened every night of the week the guard became frustrated. Finally, his curiosity overcame his frustration. "Petrovich," he said, "I know you. Tell me what you’re smuggling out of here, and I’ll let you go."

"Wheelbarrows, my friend, " said Petrovich, "wheelbarrows."

I'm easily distracted. Any and anything can distract me from something I'm doing and even more so when I'm doing something that is boring or I have no interest in doing. I think that, that could be true to many people.  The type of distractions I was thinking about were ones that distract me from God. 

The devil LOVES to distract us from God. He likes to interrupt when we're having a quiet time, prayer or talking to a friend.  He'll come along and cause you to think about other things or change our mood.  Our phone may ring or beep, someone will need our attention etc and then our prayer time is over.  What happens most often in the evenings is that I'll be tired, so I say... "I'll sleep now and have a quiet time tomorrow." That never happens, because I always end up doing other things.  If I pray at night now, I force myself to push through the tiredness. 

Other ways that the devil distracts me from doing what God wants is by making me feel like crap. I'll start feeling insecure, stupid and like a failure when it comes to doing things like leading Gap or talking to people.  I have started to realise that this is just the devil trying to get me to chicken out from what God wants me to and preventing Gods work from getting done.

Sometimes I just feel bored with praying, or sitting still and listening to God. This is when my mind wonders the most and I start thinking of the most RANDOMEST stuff ever.

2 Corinthians 2:11 says Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his (Satan's) devices. 

I think it's important that we know how the devil tries to distract us so that we can recognise the distractions and then ignore him. I also think that it's important that we learn to recognise that the devil doesn't want us to move forward with God and will do anything to distract us.  He even does it in small ways so that we don't realise that it's him. It's like the guy in the story stealing wheelbarrows, he distracted the guard and only when it was a little bit too late did he realise.  We also generally only realise when it's too late that something is missing and that we've been distracted.  BUT the most awesome thing about God is he'll still be there trying to get our attention.