Heaven-minded: Seek Ye First the Kingdom

For more than 90 years, the song "Georgia On Mind" has been popular and beloved across musical genres. It is a song that celebrates the beauty and comfort of a place. It has become a part of American culture for people to celebrate the states they call home through entertainment, fashion and more. However, celebrating having Heaven on our minds has never been popular in our country, or the world for that matter. How often is heaven truly discussed in our churches, our homes, our communities? And we definitely know it's not being celebrated in our schools, work places, government, and industries.

When you think of it, it's mind-blowing. How could we go a day without talking, thinking or boasting about the most beautiful place we could ever find ourselves in? The most perfect place to ever be made? The place where there is no crying, no pain, no worry, unspeakable joy and most of all the place where we can be face-to-face eternally with our God, our Creator, our Savior and our true Christian family?

Yet, we will celebrate places that can be destroyed in an instant by a natural or human disaster, places wheres we've experienced heartache, trauma, abuse, letdowns, poverty, sickness, and all sorts of foolish and dark things. It seems that the only time people mention Heaven is at a funeral, often falsely assuming the deceased has "gone on to Glory" - whether they were truly saved or not.

I am a witness. Before I really got saved, I went to church every week and participated in programs through the week, but I was not focused on God. He was not first in my life. I was going through the motions. And when I did get saved under the leadership of our pastor 16 years ago, I still struggled with being sincere before God because of the double life I was taught to live as a Sunday Christian instead of an everyday member of God's kingdom.

This week at the Body of Christ, Inc., Chief Apostle HC Gunn has been teaching us the value of setting our minds on a daily basis to focus on the things of Heaven, to live in the spirit while we are on earth so that we will be prepared to live in Heaven, to live with God. God is holy and he cannot allow things that are unholy in his presence.

Chief Apostle reminded us to: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

He said: Don't be consumed by the world but be absorbed with the Kingdom of God. Don't be preoccupied with what's going on in the world and around you because it robs you of your time and life with God. Don't come to church religiously just to have a good time, let out a good praise, get a pick-me-up, and hear a good word. Seek God and his Kingdom, his ways, his plan, his goals, his will first as you start your day and throughout the day. Let Him be the first person you speak to in the morning and the last person you speak to at night. Let him and Heaven stay on your mind all day. Talk to him, praise him, listen to him and believe him all day. Not just when you want something, not just when you go to church or before you get there.

He also reminded us to make this scripture alive in our lives: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." (Colossians 3:1-5)

Time is winding down, the end of this world is soon near, and Chief Apostle urged us that it's time for us to start to care about pleasing God first. It's time to consider Heaven, consider God's mind, consider God's appointed leaders and his people, consider what God cares about and what he has to say. We often put so much weight into what the world has to say, what our friends and family have to say, what social media has to say, what TV and music has to say, what politicians have to say, but we spend our days disregarding what's important and what counts to God. We spend our days full of worry, which is a sin and which breeds sickness, depression and fear. We would rather be worried about how much money, clothes, food and things we have then how much Christ, joy, love, kindness and giving we have. We care more about how others see us than how God sees us. We care more about the creation the the Creator and because we don't care for him, we don't trust him and we don't learn to lean on him to provide all of our needs as he has promised in his word. Instead, we are just floating out here on our own with no hope, because we've placed it in the world instead of heaven and the Man who made it.

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:25-34)

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