Articles
What Are You Thinking?
Giving more consideration to something other than God is, frankly, not giving Him enough! We understand this, yet how hard is it to keep life’s distractions from consuming our attention? We must understand, if we give more of our attention to worldly pursuits then our goal is not truly being with our heavenly Father in eternity - it has shifted, perhaps unknowingly, to something else.
When discomfort, pain, and sorrow creep in it is very easy to succumb to anxiety or despondency. The subtlety of these temptations is that, once we slip into them, negligence of spiritual matters turns into a trivial thing.
Certainly, there are catastrophic afflictions that can plague us from time to time, but remember the words of Paul, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17a). This statement is even more powerful when realizing that he says this while having personally suffered imprisonments, beatings, incessant persecution, shipwrecks, concern for Christ’s church - to name a few (2 Cor. 11:23-27). For Paul, even these things were “light” afflictions. How in the world could Paul possibly think that way? Well, he was thinking about heaven!
How do some of those afflictions compare to that of the 21st century? 1st century Christians suffered, generally, far weightier afflictions than we do in modern times. Yet, so many today can hardly deal with these, truly, lighter afflictions.
This is a terrifying thing. Why? Well, if one cannot deal with these lighter afflictions today it is not because our hope is lesser or weaker than what Christians had in the 1st century. Likely, it is because, unlike those Christians, our hope is not fixed on the heavenly but on something earthly; we are simply not focusing on heaven enough - or at all.
There is a beautiful hymn written by Ada Powell and Benjamin Beall entitled, “Sing to Me of Heaven.” The first verse in particular says, “Sing to me of heaven. Sing that song of peace. From the toils that bind me it will bring release. Burdens will be lifted that are pressing so. Showers of great blessings over my heart will flow…” Should this not be the Christian’s constant mindset?
When we sing about and consider heaven, shouldn’t all of our concerns begin to vanish? Not because they weren’t actually difficult in the first place, but they just pale in comparison to the grander themes we read about in Scripture. Or at the very least, like Jesus calms the storm, they are brought into submission of a holy perspective. Such a perspective, a spiritual one, sees past the “momentary” or temporary issues which surround.
So the main question is: Are you thinking more about the spiritual or the physical? If you knew that you were going to meet God in eternity this very night, would you be focusing on the same things that you’ve been focusing on today or the last few weeks, months, or years? or would that change? Obviously, we can’t know when we will leave this earth, so we’re not going to live like today’s our last day — we have responsibilities. However, if we did have this knowledge we would without a doubt rid ourselves of the distractions from worldly pursuits.
Still, it is hard to be undistracted when all around us is temptation, stumbling blocks, and chaos. While the devil delights in using these things to steal our attention from heaven, Paul says they don’t have to as they’re only “light and momentary.” But we’ll only view them as such “while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 11:17b-18). Are we looking for the eternal or temporal?
We forget that the visible things (outward circumstances) are only temporary, while the invisible things (heaven) are undoubtedly our eternal future. Christians must remember that we “walk by faith, not by sight…” (2 Cor. 5:7; also see Heb. 11:1). But does this mean that we have, as some call it, blind and baseless faith? Quite the opposite! Our faith is based on what we know. From the fine tuning of the universe which proclaims its Creator, to the very attributes of God evidently embedded in His masterpiece, we have powerful testaments of the Almighty (Ps. 19:11; Rom. 1:20).
There is a very real sense in which the things that are everlasting (yet invisible) are more deeply based in reality than the things which fade away (yet visible). In the end, our souls will go on in eternity while everything else is forgotten. So once again, what is more important to be mindful of today: (1) Eternal things which will remain and will guide us to heaven? Or (2) Passing glories of this world which will fade and lead us to oblivion? You get to choose everyday. What will you decide from here on out?
