Set Your Mind On Things Above:Desire

Psalm 73:24-26

²⁴You guide me with your counsel,
   and afterward you will receive me to glory.
²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but you?
   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Since I got back in town last week I've been really busy. For the most part the time has been well spent with friends discussing what God has been doing in our lives, and it's been really encouraging. On the other hand there has also been some time that wasn't so well spent. It's been awesome, but I haven't taken much of any time to myself. I'm writing this blog as a reminder for myself and anyone else who reads this to slow down and to pray for deeper desire for the Lord. For a deeper love and focus on God who is above all. Jesus withdrew himself to be with the Father whenever he needed, but many times we feel the need to constantly be around people and occupied with something. Why?

Despite all the business and multiple conversations about God I have been having lately desire has been at the core of many of them. Our lives are controlled by what we desire, whatever it may be. On the way home last week Sam and I listened to a sermon by Francis Chan about desiring godly character. He talked about how so many people desire goals, like being in a relationship. But when they get into a relationship and things don't work out they don't understand what wrong. We don't take Jesus seriously when he said "Seek first the kingdom of God and righteousness and all these things will be added to you"(Matt. 6:33) We focus instead on our desires and we end up without godly character and the goal we were heading towards. We spend so much of our time desiring and striving after goals in our life that we overlook the kind of Christian we need to be.

What kind of Christian do we want to be?

What kind of Christian does God want us to be?

Do these things even match up?

These are all questions that have been weighing heavily on my mind lately. Am I so consumed with God's will for my life that I desire to carry out his law and to live humbly like Christ? Do I accept and take ownership of truths in the Bible that I don't want to believe? Do we truthfully desire God's will to be done in our lives? God is a justifier, but he is also just and hates and must punish unrighteousness. Thankfully our God is also merciful and gracious and through Christ we have been set free from sin (Romans 8:2). And we have been set free not to set our minds and desires on things of the flesh, but instead on things of the Spirit. Ultimately and thankfully it is not up to us. God is in control and it is our duty to glorify Him and to submit ourselves to His mercy and grace. Christ conquered death so that we may obtain his righteousness, not by anything we have done but by God's grace.

We have to ask ourselves if we are desiring Christ and God's glory above all? Is God's will and law on our minds? If not all we can do is pray. Pray for humility and submission. Pray for grace and mercy. If we aren't desiring God are we really saved? This are questions that we need to be asking ourselves and aware of in our lives. Too often as Christians we are complacent with our thoughts and are not aware how far our hearts and desires are from Him who saved us? We forget God's promises and we lose a desire to set our mind on things that are above.

I pray that our relationships with the Lord will reflect the same humility and wisdom of Christ. That God will reveal to us and will understand that he really is all we need. That God will give us a desire and hunger for truth, and a desire to own that truth no matter what it is. 

"Christians deprive themselves of their most solid comforts by their unbelief and forgetfulness of God's promises." 

~Samuel Parker

Psalm 37:3_5

  ³ Trust in the LORD, and do good;

    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

⁴ Delight yourself in the LORD,

   and he will give you the desires of your heart.

 ⁵ Commit your way to the LORD;

    trust in him, and he will act.

Set Your Mind On Things Above: Abide In Love

Colossians 3:2

² Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

"We will wear compassion

We will wear it on our chests

And sing with love at our throats

Like a child, it's all I know"

Colossians 3:2 has always been one of my favorite verses, because it is all about focus. It is when we take our eyes off Jesus, off of eternity, off the promises of God that we succumb to sin and submit again to a yoke of slavery. This verse has really been weighing on my heart heavy lately so I have decided to let it serve as a theme for my next few blog entries. I read a quote and I think it's by C.S. Lewis and the general idea of the statement was when Christians stop thinking about eternity we become useless in this world and the next, because we lose a unified purpose on what truly matters, the eternal kingdom. I hope and pray that we can be characterized as a generation that remembers our citizenship is in heaven, and that this realization will transform how we spend our short time and resources on this earth.

On top of all of this love and compassion have really been on the forefront of mind. From listening to the As Cities Burn song Gates and reading through 1 John the theme of living a life marked by love and compassion has been reiterated multiple times. Last night I also had a very vivid dream after reading and meditating on the first three chapters of 1 John. I know this dream was from God, because it definitely spoke to me and struggles I have been having. But I feel like this is also   something that I am meant to share with faith that God will change other people’s lives just like he has changed mine.

So in this dream I was walking with some friends and we came across this beautiful tall tree. And as we were admiring this tree we watch as this girl proceeds to climb   it. When she got to the top without hesitation she jumped. Everyone was in shock and assumed she was dead so no one went to help her. I couldn't believe what was going on so I quickly ran to her to find she was still alive. I called 911 and they took us to this weird dystopian hospital/mental ward. When we arrived they kept asked me how they could help this girl and I responded "just love her." They told me they couldn't do that and I just kept repeating to them "you have to love her you have to she is hurting and she needs love." And like a broken record they kept saying "we cannot do that". It got to the point where I was screaming and crying at these people and then I woke up.

After reflecting more and more on this dream today three main meanings have jumped out at me.

1) Literal Meaning

1 John  2:10 

¹⁰Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

When I woke up right after the dream my first thought was I have to love and have compassion for everyone like I did in that dream. I have to be that passionate about loving everyone in my life. I didn't even know the girl who attempted suicide in my dream and I think that's important. It doesn't matter who she was we are called to  be imitators of Christ and His love to all. We are called to show grace and love and forgiveness to everyone even if we don't think they deserve it. Christ radically  changed this world with love and we are called to do the same.

2) God's Love For Us

Romans 5:7-8

⁷For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— ⁸but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The more I thought about this dream I realized that this is also an allegory of the Father's love for us. God died for us when we were under a yoke of slavery to sin. Enslaved to the very thing God hates and finds disgusting. Yet He became sin for us so that we may attain His righteousness, because He loves us that much. That blows my mind. I am called to imitate that. You are called to imitate that. Are we really living this out? Are we really focused on the love that is from above? Are we showing the same grace to others  Christ so freely gives to us? We obviously did nothing to deserve it.

3) Our Love/Lack of Love For Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ

1 John 3:14

¹⁴We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.

Finally the more I thought about it I was struck by the oddity of the people who did nothing. Then it hit me how often we as a church body stand by idly when it is so obvious that the body is broken and hurting. We are just as much the people refusing to love the broken as we are the people demanding for love in this world. It's not Biblical and it's going on in our body.

Something has to change, and this only can be done through relying on the Holy  Spirit and focusing on God's love from above. 1 John 4:19 says "We love because he first loved us." True love comes from the Father. It comes from above. It involves living like Jesus. Counting others as more important than ourselves. It won't always be comfortable. There will be suffering. These are all things we claim to know, but in many cases we look just like the world. Thankfully we are covered by  the grace and love of Christ, but we have not truly received grace and love if we are not giving this back to the world. I pray that God will reveal to us what is holding us back from loving like this. I pray the Father will give us a passion to love others like Christ did. I pray above all that God will give us an understanding of true love.

Why don't we love like Christ?

Do I believe I can achieve total satisfaction solely through Christ?

Do I believe at my core that God loves me completely and fully?

It's my desire for us as a body to meditate on the Scriptures and these questions asking God  for a passion to love Him and to love others. Asking God to transform us and to forgive us so that we can be made new and live a radical life for Him.

1 John 3:18

¹⁸Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

"Love is doing whatever you need to do to help people see and savor the glory of  God in Christ forever and ever."

~John Piper

"We will wear compassion 

We will wear it  

And the gates of Hell  

They won't stand, they won't stand against it"