Submitted by Kerry Patton
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Colossians 3:2
I want MORE!
For many of us, what we want is…more. The specifics may vary. We may want more time with our family, or more time to ourselves. Some may want more money, or a specific item that will advance a collection. We may desire more space to put the things we have! Not long ago, I saw a t-shirt that read: “My wife said that if I buy one more guitar she’d leave me…I sure am going to miss her.” Songwriter Rich Mullins wrote in his song entitled One Thing: “Everybody I know says they need just one thing. And what they really mean is that they need just one thing more.”
Some of the things we want seem to be very important…but in truth they are not vital or essential. We simply desire them: a bigger house, a newer car, a slimmer body, a different face, name brand clothing, or the latest electronic gizmo.
Other things may seem to be much more essential. We may desire an expensive life saving drug, a hole in the roof to be repaired, bigger shoes, lower cholesterol, food, water, and/or affection.
What do you want? Have you given it much thought? The desires of our heart can create great conflict within us. James chapter 4:1-2 counsels us: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Do you want? If so, do you have any idea what it is that you desire? What is your heart’s desire?
One thing I ask of the Lord…
In Psalm 27:4, David expressed what he wanted most: “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”
What did the Apostle Paul want? He wanted to know Jesus. Philippians 3:8-11 reads: “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
On things above…
In this society, we understand advertising’s ability to plant within us to desire things we neither need, nor have ever known desire for before. This proves to us that what we want can be in no small way influenced…even controlled. Most importantly, we can direct our minds to concentrate on certain things. Desire can be born within us. In our opening scripture, we were directed to “set our minds on things above.” We may be able to discern better between things that are essential, and things that are temporal…between the things we want, and the things we need.
Scripture to claim:
“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,”
Romans 8:6
Prayer – “Lord, help me to discipline my mind, that my desires may be on things above. You, oh Lord are what I truly desire. Set my mind on you!”
