We worry about the coins in our pocket, while heaven has streets of gold. “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass” (Revelation 21:1,21).
So long as your mind is founded on the temporal, the eternal will make no sense to you at all.
Your life on earth is the down payment on eternity.
Act as though you are in heaven, because you are of heaven. “For our citizenship is in heaven…” (Philippians 3:20).
You can never keep the temporary and you will never lose the eternal.
You are made for heaven. “…He has put eternity in their hearts…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
If we would only see life through the lenses of eternity, we would not be so consumed by the meaningless.
Decisions made with eternity in mind never trade the foolishness of the now for the wisdom of forever.
The world and all its problems will disappear, but the Lord and His saints will live forever. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever…” (John 6:51).
Temporary versus the Eternal
If we spent half as much time thinking eternally as we think on the temporary, we would be spiritual giants.
Temporary is the thief of the eternal.
Think temporal and always be empty or think eternally and never lack. “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).
The temporary competes with the eternal. The natural opposes the spiritual. The darkness stands in contrast to the light.
As long as you hold onto things, He cannot be your everything. It is easy to let go, until it is something truly dear to you. Let go anyway. Eternal returns always trump temporal claims.
The world can only argue with temporal grounds against eternal truths.
The “here and now” competes with the “always and forever”. Invest yourself eternally. “And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life” (1 John 2:25).
Where you focus most reveals what matters most.
The things you grab hold of in the natural will soon pass away. the things you grab hold of in the spiritual will carry on for all of eternity. Hold tightest to those things you will never lose.
Eternal choices
Don’t live for the moment, live for eternity. “…take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…” (1 Timothy 6:12).
You will have to live with yourself forever, so make decisions knowing this.
Let all you do be in the light of eternity and not in the darkness of this world.
It is good that you know Jesus, but your eternity rests on if He knows you. There is nothing more important in your faith, but that you would be rightly related to the Lord Jesus. Get that right and everything else will fall into place.
How you spend your time reflects what you value most. You are either investing time into eternity or squandering time over the empty promises of this world. “Thus says the LORD, ‘What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?’” (Jeremiah 2:5 NASB).
Weigh your decisions on the eternal scale.
The purposes of God are never limited by the timelines of man. Eternal longings require eternal purposes.
Eternal Investments
View the temporal through the lens of eternity. The world clamors for the things of now. They invest everything into pleasing a flesh that will rot. All they desire will be gone. Desire higher that you might reach for the heavens.
In the temporal are corpses chasing emptiness hoping for one last pleasure. But you, clamor for eternal things. Seek His pleasures to your spirit forevermore. “For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life” (Galatians 6:8).
Invest in the now and lose forever, or invest in forever and have nothing to lose.
The world says he who dies with the most toys wins. Jesus said, he who dies to himself wins his life.
In the end all the world brings is death. Death is not winning. With God, there will be no end.
When you walk in the eternal, the temporary loses power over you. “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).
Lord, take away from me the desire to grow and to gather in this world. Replace it I pray, with the desire to grow and to gather for Your kingdom. The one is for but a breath, the other is for eternity.
It is when we get to heaven that we will realize what has the most value, and so we will only use gold as pavement for our streets.
Blessings to you,
Paul
All Scripture is in red and uses the NKJV (New King James Version) translation unless otherwise noted.
How do you do that? I could use some examples from your life and how you lost attachment to the world and how long it took for you.
I’ve been through much tribulation and have been learning to know only God. There is so much of the world that I could care less about. I’m still attached to food and need prayers to let that go.
Help!
I believe that it takes the power of the God who created all things to change a man. I pray to the Father that the Holy Spirit would do a work in me, that He would help me to die to my flesh more and more every day. If ever you can, pick up a little book by Andrew Murray called “absolute Surrender”. If you are willing to be changed, God will change you.
We live in a time when much of evangelical Christianity has turned on it’s head and totally man centered – promising ‘breakthroughs’ in avery area of this life and all sorts of material successes, telling us to reach out for our ‘dream destinies’, as if God exists for us, and not us for him. Becoming attached less to this world and more to the next invariably finds it’s root in the written word of God and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Keith Green once said, in an introduction to his music that “if God created this world in 6 days and has been preparing a home for us for 2,000 years, we’re lving in a garbage can.”
Then there’s this:
Ephesians 1:3-14 New International Version (NIV)
Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[a] predestined us for adoption to sonship[b] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he[c] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
11 In him we were also chosen,[d] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
When the indweling Holy Spirit brings that home to our hearts it changes our attitude concerning this world.
I love hearing verses that talk about the true riches, in the verse you had above it says “…the riches of God’s grace”. I think that when once we realize the eternal significance and value of such riches as His grace, we will at once throw all our gold to the ground, that it would be mere pavement for our streets. How foolish we are in grasping for the corruptible things of this world whilst we squander His true riches when we are distracted by the meaningless things of today.
Thank you so much Dan, I really appreciated your views on the heavenly things.