Heavenly Mindedness (61)

 

Let’s look at the first paragraph from Vos’s conclusion, quoted in the previous post:

 

“Finally the highest thing that can be spoken about this city is that it is the city of our God, that He is in the midst of it. Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God. The patriarchs looked not for some city in general, but for a city whose builder and maker was God.”

 

One of the banes of our pagan post-modernity is that we live without basic spiritual, intellectual, moral, ethical, and emotional fundamentals. We reinvent the wheel daily, we scratch where it itches, seldom questioning whether we ought to do so; we are people of appetite being fattened up for the kill. Vos concludes his message on heavenly - mindedness with fundamentals. What are the fundaments in the above quotation?

 

We are called to seek the City of God, a “city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10), and we are seeking this City because God is there and we want to be with God. This means that we freely confess that we are “strangers and exiles on earth” (Heb. 11:13) and that we are “seeking a country of our own” (Heb. 11:14).  When Paul points out that we are citizens of heaven in Philippians 3:20, he does it in the context counting his earthly pedigree among dung that he may know Jesus Christ.

 

Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, wither neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19 – 21).

 

This is a call to be singled-mined, for Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24).

 

Christ calls us to an exclusive allegiance and devotion and love to Himself and to the City of God. The thieves which would steal from us are many, and most of them look pretty good, appealing to our ego, individually and collectively, and exerting peer pressure on us. Whether it is material prosperity, fame, security, nationalism, scribal Christianity, or hedonistic Christianity, most thieves dress themselves up so as to seduce and deceive us. Many thieves within the professing church tempt us to substitute something for a relationship with Jesus Christ, they brand a teaching, a movement, or an emphasis, with His Name, but as with the Galatians, they direct our attention elsewhere; caricatures of Jesus Christ abound within the professing church.

 

Living in heavenly – mindedness means saying “No” to many things; things of the world and things of the professing church. We are not looking for just any city, we are looking for the City of God because that is where God lives and we want to live in God, through God, and unto God, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We learn to recognize that, “Except  Yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless Yahweh guards the city, the watchman keeps aware in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

 

“Traced to its ultimate root heavenly-mindedness is the thirst of the soul after God, the living God.”

 

What is eternal life? It is knowing the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).

 

“O God, You are my God; I shall seek you earnestly and early; my soul thirsts for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1 - 2).

 

We are called to be ever looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), knowing that as we see Him that we are transformed into His image (1 John 3:1-3; 2Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

Are we thirsting after God? Where are our treasures?

 

Are we pointing people to Jesus Christ, or are we marketing a Christian lifestyle?

 

Do we satiate our souls with the passing things of this earth, including religious things, or are we crying out to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified? (1Cor. 2:2).

 

When we arise in the morning, do we soak our souls in Christ and His Word or in the things of this earth? Are we eating from the Tree of Life or from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

 

Are we crying out, “O Father, O Lord Jesus, teach me to seek Your Face! Give me a thirst that only You can quench! A hunger that only You can satisfy!”

 

Are we offering ourselves to God (Rom. 12:1 – 2) so that He might give us as broken Bread and poured out Wine to our generation in and through Jesus Christ? O dear friends, to partake of the Communion Table means that we must be that Communion Table, in Christ, to others – one of reasons we know that the Eucharist is sacramental.

 

The depths of eternity are calling to the sons and daughters of the Living God. Our Father’s Throne is calling us home. Living Water is flowing from the Throne to draw us to that Place where God is all in All. Let us be like the son who “came to himself” and headed home to where he belonged – let us forbear to eat the food of swine, no matter how hungry we may be, for our Father will surely care of us. Let us endeavor to bring others along, knowing that we can’t force them, but also knowing that as they hear the Name of the Father, His Nature, that they just might leave their fishing nets and follow Jesus (Hebrews 2:9 – 13).

 

O dear friends, if we will live with God in eternity, ought we not to be seeking to live in Him and through Him and unto Him now, today, this very moment? O dear sister, O dear brother, your Father sent His Firstborn to reveal His love for you, to shower you with His grace, to bring you home to where you have always belonged. Jesus  Christ has given you His glory and He dearly desires that you be filled with His joy and love (John 17:22 – 26).

 

I pray, as I write these very words, that you will know the fulness of the life and love and joy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I pray that your life will be enveloped in the Holy Trinity and that your life, in Christ, will feed the lives of others.