Fall: Week One
Seek First the Kingdom
"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
~ Matthew 6:33 ~
This is the core statement in Jesus’ famous "Sermon on the Mount." Everything He said there led up to this idea of living for something more than yourself. In this section, Jesus was addressing where people put their hearts, in earthly possessions or in their faith in God. Oswald Chambers, in his devotional My Utmost For His Highest, says that these are "the most revolutionary [words] that human ears have ever heard." Why, because this goes against the social current of our human nature. We are taught to always take care of number one, to live for yourself. But Jesus was a radical dude; He taught His followers to live life upstream. Max Lucado refers to 2 Chronicles 7:14 in his book Turn and calls us "to turn from self-promotion to God-promotion, to turn from self-reliance to God-dependence, to turn from self-direction to God-direction, and to turn from self-service to repentance."
You have to start with this in mind, without accepting that true, authentic Christianity is a calling to go against the grain and live for something much larger than yourself. The guys from dc Talk in the book Living Under God use the illustration of contrasting the colonial settlements of Plymouth, MA and Jamestown, VA. The Pilgrims of Plymouth were devoted to living for God, and when the going got tough, they were not deterred. They would leave a legacy of freedom and of unity for generations to come. On the other hand, the original settlers of Jamestown (the Virginia Company) were only concerned about making money. However, they also believed that hard work was beneath a "gentleman," in fact many of the settlers died rather than doing simple things like chopping wood for warmth or digging wells for water. And when the local gold mine turned out to be full of "fool’s gold" (iron pyrite), they turned their attention to tobacco. The legacy that they left for future generations was a legacy of slavery and of lung cancer.
What legacy will you leave? Will you keep your “mind on things above” (Col 3:2) and live for something more than yourself? Or will you leave a legacy of slavery to sin and to money? What do you want people to see in your life?
God promises to take care of all of your needs if you only “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.” I encourage you to look up Matthew 6:19-34 and really let it soak in. By simply shifting your focus, you can begin to change your life for the better.
