Foundation For Christian Living

What are you seeking?

If you have been raised (and you have)

Live like you have!

Saying: so heavenly minded that he is no earthly good. Impossible!

Believers’ lives should be dominated by the pattern of heaven.

Fixing their attention decisively toward “things above” involves centering their lives on the ascended, glorified Christ, who is seated at the right hand of God.

Primary allegiance in life:

I pledge allegiance to the Lamb

With all my strength

With all I am

I will seek to honor His commands

I pledge allegiance to the Lamb

Just like Pledge of allegiance to the flag, requires more than lip service. In Iraq there are soldiers who will say the pledge this morning; lay down their life this afternoon. All of those soldiers will live out their life according to the pledge today.

How does Jesus put it?

Mt. 6:33

First place of seeking is the reign of God, not the tyranny of the world. Key into His righteousness.

Then: all these things. When you are seeking the kingdom - What God is done in your life to bring you correct living and what you sense He is going to do next. It is the work of God in your life as He implants heavenly attitudes and heavenly accomplishments into you.

Ever notice the most godly people are more obsessed over issues in their lives that do not glorify God than the most worldly? Seeking

Paul: 1 Timothy 1:15. Did Paul truly believe that he was the most immoral person in the world at that moment? Yes… because the greater the seeking of God’s kingdom and His righteousness, the great the awareness of the depth of sin. And the greater that you are amazed by grace….

What are you seeking this morning?

What are you thinking?

Seeking suggests striving; set your mind suggests concentrating.

concentrate your concern on the eternal, not the temporal

What he is not saying: Look back at (2:20-23).

Paul was not calling for otherworldly living; he had just condemned that. He was saying that life in this world will be better if it is lived by a power beyond this world, the power of the resurrected, ascended, glorified Christ.

One of the highest and noblest functions of man’s mind is to listen to God’s Word, and so to read his mind and think his thoughts after him.

John R. W. Stott (1921- )

Concentration begins in knowing and understanding God’s direct revelation to man: the Word of God.

More than knowing … contemplating.

I came home after the Southern Baptist Convention. First though as I pulled into the driveway: Gotta cut the grass…quick.

If a man lets his garden alone, it very soon ceases to be a garden; and if a saint lets his mind alone, it will soon become a rubbish heap for Satan to make use of.

Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

I love praise songs, but there is a problem with a steady diet of only praise songs. Function of hymns was not only to lift us to the heights. Include the teaching of truth about how we live.

Come thy Fount of every Blessing:

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Our mind is prone to wander away from truth…and to run into some pretty loathsome places… Need to think the right way.

The human intellect even in its fallen state is an awesome work of God, but it lies in darkness until it has been illuminated by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord has little good to say of the unilluminated mind, but He revels in the mind that has been renewed and enlightened by grace. He always makes the place of His feet glorious; there is scarcely anything on earth more beautiful than a Spirit-filled mind, certainly nothing more wonderful than an alert and eager mind made incandescent by the presence of the indwelling Christ. A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

an alert and eager mind made incandescent by the presence of the indwelling Christ.

Describe your thought life?

What is life, really?

v. 3-4

typed “what I live for” into Google. Live for art, live for music. Reverend CyberSatan who lives for pain and cynicism.

For the Christian only one answer: Christ who is my life….

Pastor, you’re getting sort of fanatical, aren’t you? Better believe it.

Paul said it: For me to live is Christ and to die is gain….

Life is hidden: Not hidden as in can’t find it. “Hidden” implies both concealment and safety; both invisibility and security. “Where’s that hundred dollars I gave you?” Oh, I’ve got it hidden for a rainy day. Our life is hidden.

He is not yet glorified, but he is secure and safe in Christ.

they should look upward to Christ’s reign over them in heaven and also forward to His return for them in the clouds.