My Own Little World

Intensive study this morning getting ready for next weeks sermon.  It has been a gut shaking, exciting morning in God's Word.  I get energized and want to go out and preach this today.  It is also intense conviction of my very sorry state.

Jesus, the creator and sustainer of the universe, is God.  I am about as far from that as I can get.  Yet my daily concerns are almost always centered on me.  Even when I think I have gone beyond myself, I still find myself so focused on this world and not the larger reality of God.  I pray for my wife and kids every day, but my prayer is incredibly earth bound.  I pray that they will sleep well, that they will be well, that they will be safe, that nothing bad will happen to them but that their life will be full of earthly goodness.  Now if a life full of earthly goodness also glorifies God, then that's great, but my primary concern is their well-being, not their ability to glorify God.  Nor mine.  Don't get me wrong, I want to glorify God.  I have given my life to His service.  But that service is proscribe, sometimes very tightly, by my earthly viewpoint.

What if God's glory requires something different?  Throughout the Bible, God has often found glory through the suffering of His servants, and yet they often times were able to look at that suffering as a joy simply because they saw that suffering gave them what they needed; to glorify God.  The Christians of the first century were often excited when they found out they could be martyred, not because they were gluttons for punishment but because they were more focused on God's kingdom than this little world we live in here.

We, like Mary and Martha, cry over the death of a loved one.  It is not wrong to miss them, but we often act like this is the world that matters and we lose so easily the perspective of the "real" world of God.  Jesus tries to wake Mary and Martha up a little.  "I am the resurrection and the life."  Why are they so upset when Lazarus isn't dead, he's in heaven.  So caught up in their little world and Jesus so focused in the real world, His Kingdom.  I'm the same way as those ladies.  My daily concerns are primarily of this little world.  I pray for my day, my car, cold viruses, rain, and food.  How sad is it that so much of my life, my day, my prayers are taken up with the items of this little world.  The things of this world are passing away.  May I learn to get my focus more completely and more consistenly on His world, His kingdom.  Those are the prayers God longs to answer!!!