Where's Your Head At?
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
I learned a few years ago that I’ve got to be careful how much time I spend playing video games. No, the point of this devo is not that YOU should stop playing video games. You’re probably fine. But I had to back way off. The problem wasn’t violence or language or related to the game’s content. It doesn’t matter if it’s a first-person shooter or saving the princess with Mario. The problem is that I can’t get seem to escape from the game in my head until I beat it, and I hate being “owned” by anything in that way.
Even when I wasn’t playing a game, I’d spend hours thinking about it, lying in bed not sleeping. I wonder if I crouched down and went through the second door on the right and threw my grenade, would that get me past the two-headed monster? I’ve got to get up and try that. I’d even dream about the game I was playing.
I hated spending so much time with my head “stuck” in a world that didn’t really exist. In this passage, Paul challenges Christians to rethink where our “reality” really is and to get our hearts and heads “stuck” there. “If you’re truly a believer,” he wrote, “then your real life is Jesus and it is with Him in heaven right this minute.” Yes, your day-to-day existence is unfolding on earth, but it’s not the life that really matters.
So, he said, set your hearts and minds “on things above.” Start investing more and more of your mental and emotional energy in the things of heaven now. Don’t wait until the screen reads “Game Over” on this life. Lay in bed at night thinking about the “above things.”
Like what? How about the writings directly from God, heaven’s primary occupant? How about the people with whom we will share our “real lives” there? How about what I can do right now to make a difference in the eternity I will spend there? Once you start, you could spend years thinking and dreaming about heaven. And that’s the idea.
So where’s your head at? Are you mentally and emotionally stuck in things that just won’t matter 100 years from now? Paul urged us to get move our thoughts to a more permanent reality. In the rest of Colossians 3, he described how that change of mind will change all of our choices about how to live on this side of heaven. If you take a minute to read through his lists, you’ll get a clue about what you’re really living for. Is it a life that matters?
--Colossians 3:1-4
I learned a few years ago that I’ve got to be careful how much time I spend playing video games. No, the point of this devo is not that YOU should stop playing video games. You’re probably fine. But I had to back way off. The problem wasn’t violence or language or related to the game’s content. It doesn’t matter if it’s a first-person shooter or saving the princess with Mario. The problem is that I can’t get seem to escape from the game in my head until I beat it, and I hate being “owned” by anything in that way.
Even when I wasn’t playing a game, I’d spend hours thinking about it, lying in bed not sleeping. I wonder if I crouched down and went through the second door on the right and threw my grenade, would that get me past the two-headed monster? I’ve got to get up and try that. I’d even dream about the game I was playing.
I hated spending so much time with my head “stuck” in a world that didn’t really exist. In this passage, Paul challenges Christians to rethink where our “reality” really is and to get our hearts and heads “stuck” there. “If you’re truly a believer,” he wrote, “then your real life is Jesus and it is with Him in heaven right this minute.” Yes, your day-to-day existence is unfolding on earth, but it’s not the life that really matters.
So, he said, set your hearts and minds “on things above.” Start investing more and more of your mental and emotional energy in the things of heaven now. Don’t wait until the screen reads “Game Over” on this life. Lay in bed at night thinking about the “above things.”
Like what? How about the writings directly from God, heaven’s primary occupant? How about the people with whom we will share our “real lives” there? How about what I can do right now to make a difference in the eternity I will spend there? Once you start, you could spend years thinking and dreaming about heaven. And that’s the idea.
So where’s your head at? Are you mentally and emotionally stuck in things that just won’t matter 100 years from now? Paul urged us to get move our thoughts to a more permanent reality. In the rest of Colossians 3, he described how that change of mind will change all of our choices about how to live on this side of heaven. If you take a minute to read through his lists, you’ll get a clue about what you’re really living for. Is it a life that matters?
1 Comments:
I will read this devotional again: not because I didn't understand it, but because God has more to reveal to me through it later. Thanks - I have realized that what I have been is an observer of Christian life, and so I say with a heart of a human who has experienced [earthly things (wholly] without being filled), I urge you to give all you got and then ask God to show you where you're at. Do not be drawn by your self on this side of heaven, but long for unity with God's heart on the other.
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