Covetousness Disrupts Eternal Thinking

Luke 12:15 NKJV — And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

It's impossible to serve God and mammon. It will wear you out, because man wasn't meant to live two lives. Everyone picks what they live for.

In my life I've lived for myself by making my life about career, family, recreation, nature, sports, music, and church... Yes, even church I made about me! In 2011, the Lord showed me how I had made my life entirely about me by creating the seemingly perfect mix of all these things ^

Although it gave me a fairly ideal "American" life, it left me very dull towards God's leadership.

In 2011, I learned the secret to giving myself fully to God. I haven't yet achieved it, but I began a journey that changed everything.

Philippians 3:12 NKJV — Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

This "secret", although I am sure it is no secret to many... But it was to me... Was prayer. Not "praying." Not telling God what to do with the world around me, but specifically asking Him to change me into a person who experienced more of His leadership. I would ask Him, and still try to several times a day, very specifically, "help me love you more. Give me a hunger and thirst for you." That prayer life grew into a lifestyle of, more and more, gazing on Jesus and seeing how different I am than Him, then mourning the difference and letting Him lead more and more of my life.

I began to mature from a person who simply understood what Jesus could give me: a relationship with God, eternal life, and a less unholy/selfish life than those I saw around me. I began maturing into an understanding that I could know Yeshua. I could find out what HE wanted... Which was control of my heart... What I thought, the emotions I felt, and what I planned to do... and ask Him for the grace to walk deeper into the loss of control of all things.

He. disrupted. My. Life.

I would never undo it.

I stopped building my career. I stopped seeking balance. I stopped most recreational activities I had given myself to. Not because He asked me to. But because I knew he had something different for me and as He led me, those things fell off of defining me. I learned to trust that. I am learning to hear Him more and more.

This is the crazy thing: As I began to learn to press in to Him, he gave me a better marriage, a better relationship with my kids, a better understanding of my identity... He changed my relationship with work, and for a while gave me more though I sought it less. Now he is shifting me even more. Taking me to places I never thought I'd go, doing things I never thought I'd do. Risking things I never thought I'd risk.

This life was never meant to be lived without God.

Social media is funny. We see so many things with no context. There is no way to know what is surrounding what we see. I picture the apostle Paul on a ship sailing to Rome to his death. If he had social media and posted a picture of his journey, we'd only see a snapshot of what he was seeing. "Sailing the med" might be the caption, but we'd have no context. We wouldn't see why he was there. Only God knew where he was going. Only God could keep Paul in the hard parts.

He keeps us mostly with beauty. There are interesting moments, cool realizations, sometimes exciting events, and lots of mundane along the way.

God knows how to keep those who ask.

No one will ever get credit for being really great and keeping themselves loyal to God. The same is true for all. Jesus will get all the glory, not man. We need God to keep us. He often keeps us with beauty.

My mom posts beautiful pictures from her deck on a lake. What no one can see is why she is there. She never pictured herself a widow at 54 with a half built house on a lake. There was a somewhat uncertain, beautiful, scary miracle that resulted in the finished house and the pictures, and even more importantly, the maturing heart that shares them. The pictures are amazing, but the context is very different than most could know. Only my mom and Jesus know how she got there. Only Jesus can keep her through the now.

What do I do with my now? Want what I think everyone else has, or want to give my now to God? Everyone has the same basic choices to make with their now and their forever.

Covetousness interrupts eternal thinking.

Covetousness is funny. It requires a lack of context. I see something that looks amazing and I am tempted to want it if I don't see what put the person there, or with that thing, in that relationship, or that role... in that life.

This temptation to want things with no context pulls on everyone. Many try not to look at social media because that pull is hard. But it isn't social media. It's life. That is why Jesus taught this verse from Luke 12 that I started with.

Everyone has choices to make. Jesus taught that there was only one valid "why" for the choices we make: to get ready for forever. That means learning to let God make our choices... Learning to let God decide what is good and evil for us.

That journey will take you places you wouldn't have imagined. If lived right, it must cost you all control except the 'yes' or 'no' you give God. But, God has something beautiful in it all along the way.

Giving your life to God has little to do with what anyone sees. We spend a significant portion of our lives right now in Jerusalem, where it's not uncommon for people to wear religion, but it has nothing to do with actually giving your life away. Wearing the garb of your people doesn't mean you tear the heart of a person who is getting to know God. It's impossible to tell who someone is serving by what they, or their circumstances, look like.

Some do and some don't live for God. In all our God circles, there are wheat and tares.

Sometimes we go hard giving our lives to God for a season and then when it gets hard, we are tempted to take it back again. Some people who preach week in and week out have never actually given their lives. It's always been about building something for them. Others have given things we could never know. We are all somewhere right now. What we do with now matters.

Only I can decide to give up my life. Only you can. The true context of where we are can only be understood by Jesus. What our lives mean will ultimately be decided by Jesus.

Social media is amazing. I love being able to see through the eyes of other people, but it's not entirely real. It's just a picture on a journey. Only Jesus knows where.