“Those who use the things of the world should not become attached to them. For this world as we know it will soon pass away.” -1^st Corinthians 7:31 (NLT)

The recent sermon from our current series in which the theme was “Life is too long to take marriage and singleness so seriously” was a convicting one for me. I believe the Spirit has been talking to me a lot lately about where my perspective is right now versus where it should be. I have been thinking a lot about how strongly I hold to earthly and thus temporary things these days. There was a time, years ago, when my life was in a dark place spiritually for a very long period of time. I remember those years as terribly difficult and it is not a period in my life that I want to repeat in the least. It did have at least one virtue, though, and that was the fact that because of it I had to cling to God, almost literally, for dear life each and every day. I was, or at least felt like I was, much more in the world than of it during those years.

Then, over time, I began to come out of my “dark night of the soul.” It was a process that involved a lot of grace-enabled hard work, but as it progressed things in this world began to get a lot better. In those years of recovery I got a great job, started ministering in new areas, regained my ability to enjoy many non-intrinsically sinful pastimes and, best of all, met and married a wonderful, godly woman.

All of this sounds great, I know, and in many ways it absolutely has been.

The problem is that the things I possess temporally in this world then started to become a major distraction to the kind of “pursuit of God” I once knew. This has been true across the board really. It includes my possessions, my positions, and my relationships. By that I mean that material things are a lot more important to me than they once were (I’m a collector, which doesn’t help); the titles I’ve been able to earn before, during, and after those “dark night” years have gained in personal importance as well; and so has the perceived status, good or bad, of my human relationships.

Meanwhile the hunger and need I earlier felt for God, whether  motivated by love or fear (or both) I know is just not as intense as it was 15 or 20 years ago. In short, the more comfortable my life on earth has become the more I have found myself clinging to it. Spiritual things, especially an active focus on an eternal future in Heaven with my Lord as my ultimate desire, have frankly suffered. My eyes have turned (at least it seems to me) from the Father who is going to take me home after a short day of building the sandcastles of this life to the sandcastles themselves, at least to some degree.

That’s scary to me, and I suspect it probably should be.

I have taken some action to do something about it. The single most important thing I have done is commit myself to some now regularly scheduled spiritual disciplines like scripture reading, prayer, contemplation of God and the things of God, and regular Christian fellowship. These are all things I used to do more spontaneously. Now I find I need to be more intentional about them if I’m not to choose the distractions of this world instead.

One thing that has also been on my heart lately is the need for me to think more about Heaven than I ever have before. I am slowly (unfortunately too slowly, to be truthful) working my way through Randy Alcorn’s book on the subject. I also need to spend time just praying and thinking, hopefully with the help of the Spirit, about the future home of the blessed. Since I also tend to be a very nostalgic person, especially about the years of my early childhood when my family was intact and happy, it has been especially difficult to look forward more than look back. That said, I know I have to make a practice of looking ahead, not just behind.

I believe there is universality about the problem I’ve been describing here. Just about every believer I know who lives in 21^st century America and isn’t going through a “clear and present crisis” has talked with me about their tendency as human beings to drift away from God when things are going well in their earthly lives. Since we who live here are generally not facing things like extreme poverty or persecution it becomes only that much easier for that “drift” to happen.

I wish I could end this meditation with a surefire and total answer for my problem, both for myself and for all of us, but I honestly am not yet at that point. It is something I’m still trying to figure out and I assume that finding a solution will be, like so many other things in the life of a Christ-follower, a process.

If and when I come up with a more complete answer I will share it gladly because, deep down, I know that nothing in this world has ever or can ever be to me what God has been to me at the moments in my life which He has defined and that is something I never want to lose, ever…