A
Message from Steve
|
A
Message from Steve |
Set
your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
We
have all probably read that sentence dozens of times. It is a short seemingly
innocuous sentence that, tucked into the middle of a paragraph as it is,
doesn’t get the attention it probably deserves. and yet it is an important
little sentence because if you study that it, ask questions as you study and
follow up on the answers to those questions it will ,lead you to realize what
being a Christian is all about.
This
sentence is, obviously, telling us to look to heaven and discover what is
important there, and to make what is important in heaven as important to us also
so that they become more important than things here on earth. Common sense.
No Christian would argue with that.
It’s fairly obvious that as we are all going to go to heaven one day
then what goes on there should be important to us.
The real problem comes with making what goes on in heaven important to us
now.
One
thing that all Christians have to realise sooner or later is that God doesn’t
allow people to sit on the fence. You
either make a choice to commit yourself to God, or by default you end up on the
opposite side to him. Either
you make the things of heaven important to you, or by default the things of
earth will be more important to you.
There is no middle ground. But
of course when you have made the decision to make the things of heaven more
important to you it doesn’t end there.
Now
having made the decision you will find that the biggest hurdle you will face
when it comes to keeping your eyes on heaven will be you, or to be more precise your human nature.
Because as humans, we are naturally more in tune with earth than heaven
and therefore the things of earth will be naturally more important to us than
things of heaven. Now when we
start to think that in order to keep our eyes on things above we have to go
against our own human nature, to fight everything that we are, we start to get
the first hint that this is not going to be as easy as that simple innocuous
sentence in Colossians chapter 3 makes it out to be.
And God never intended that it should be.
See Mathew 7:13-14.
Enter
through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads
to destruction, and many enter through it.
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a
few find it.
The
good news is that even though God never intended it to be easy, he never
intended it to be impossible either.
It’s impossible if we try to do it our way because with the best will
in the world, in our own strength we could only make the things of heaven
important to us at best 80% of the time. So
what’s the answer? It’s
no accident that Jesus, just before his ascension, told his followers to go back
to Jerusalem and wait. He did
it because he knew that without the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives they
were doomed to failure.
But
with the Holy Spirit behind them, well, you know the results.
Christianity spread like wildfire and became such a threat to the Romans
that they embarked on a campaign of persecution to try to wipe them out.
And the same Holy Spirit is still around today and still in the business
of helping Christians to keep their eyes on the things of the kingdom and to
carry out the tasks that God wants them to do.
But
knowing that still doesn’t guarantee us an easy ride, because even though we
have made a decision to follow Christ, and even though we have received the Holy
Spirit to be our guide and helper, there is still this question of our human
nature. The process of being
renewed and made into the image of Christ is one that goes on the whole of our
lives, and even though allowing the Holy Spirit to empower and guide does get
easier the more we do it, our human nature will always be there waiting to trip
us up.
But
when we do get it right, suddenly what God wants becomes more important to us
than what we want, suddenly the things that we have spent our whole lives
worrying about become less important, and we become willing to do whatever God
asks us to do. Result,
wonderful things start happening, big things and small things.
Keeping
your eyes on heaven instead of earth is not an easy thing to do but when you
master the skill the rewards are certainly worth the effort both for you and the
people who are going to benefit from what you do in God’s name.
So,
the message for all of us who follow Christ is:
Ask
God to give you his Holy Spirit every morning and cultivate the art of listening
for that still small voice that is God’s then watch wonderful things happen in
your life.
God
bless
Steve
Waters